Numerical evaluation of a multiple soil barrier system preventing water infiltration

Takayama, Yusuke*  ; Ikuta, Yuki*; Iizuka, Atsushi*; Kawai, Katsuyuki*; Taki, Tomihiro; Sakao, Ryota ; Ichikawa, Yasuaki*

In this paper, a multiple unsaturated soil barrier consisting of gravel, sand and bentonite-mixed soil layers is considered as a hardly permeable covering to prevent rainwater from infiltrating into waste deposits. Not only the quite low permeability of bentonite-mixed soil layer but also a function of capillary barrier between granular layers having different water-retention capabilities is expected to prevent water infiltration. A series of numerical simulation is carried out to evaluate performance of the multiple soil barrier using saturated/unsaturated soil/water coupled FE computation technique. The multiple unsaturated soil barrier system considered here is 10m long and 1.5 m thick consisting of sandy soil surface, sand filter, gravel layer, sand filter and bentonite-mixed clayey layer. And the soil barrier system is assumed to be placed as a covering with a 5% inclination on the waste deposit. The performance of the multiple soil barrier system is shown as a management chart to maintain impermeable ability associated with possible rainfall intensity. Particularly, in this paper, actual rainfall record in Okayama area is employed to determine the rainfall intensity which is imposed as a boundary condition in the computation. According to the simulation results, it is found that the capillary barrier is a key issue in evaluating the long term performance of the barrier system. And, it is confirmed that the barrier system considered in this paper can work well against the maximum intensity of the rainfall in the past record.