Design Principles and Concepts for Enhancing Long-Term Cap Performance and Confidence
The siting of new landfills is becoming increasing difficult as the public and stakeholders want more confidence of performance for longer times and landfill owners want to store more waste in the least area while knowing and limiting their long-term liabilities. These changes motivate re-examination of long-term performance mechanisms and their implications for cap and barrier designs. Accordingly, in this paper we first consider design principles from the standpoint of long-term performance and management, including the ability to monitor and repair barriers. We then consider some design concepts that may implement these principles, especially evapo-transpiration (ET) caps. We suggest five design principles based on experience in the cap and barrier field as well as other engineering disciplines. These principles are as follows: · Establish a clear and defendable design basis. · Design for ease of monitoring and repair. · Analyze the barrier as a dynamic system, not static. · Work with nature, not against. · Recognize that increased complexity can reduce, not enhance, net performance. ET caps are an excellent embodiment of these design principles. We apply the design principles to ET caps, as well as variants such as erosion armor, capillary breaks, bio-intrusion layers, and low permeability material layers.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho Completion Project (ICP)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE - EM
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-99ID-13727
- OSTI ID:
- 941176
- Report Number(s):
- ICP/JOU-04-00236; TRN: US0807301
- Journal Information:
- ASCE Practice Periodical of Hazardous, Toxic and Radioactive Waste Management (American Society of C, Vol. 9, Issue 4
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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