Effect of Water Content on the Shear

Strength Parameters of Municipal Solid

Waste
Zhu Bingjian
College of Civil and Architectural Engineering, Taizhou University,
Zhejiang, China; e-mail: zbj0580@126.com

Qiu Zhanhong*
College of Civil and Architectural Engineering, Taizhou University,
Zhejiang, China; e-mail:qiuzhanhong@tzc.edu.cn

Xiong Hao
College of Civil and Architectural Engineering, Taizhou University,
Zhejiang, China; e-mail: xionghao@ tzc.edu.cn

He Chunmu
College of Civil and Architectural Engineering, Taizhou University,
Zhejiang, China; e-mail: spinglog@ tzc.edu.cn

Chen Helong
College of Civil and Architectural Engineering, Taizhou University,
Zhejiang, China; e-mail: hlchen1131@163.com

ABSTRACT
Shear strength parameters are the key factors in stability analysis for municipal solid waste
landfill. The component of shallow municipal solid waste of Huangyan landfill was analyzed.
Focusing on effect of water content on the shear strength parameters, nine groups of remolded
MSW samples with different water content were prepared for direct shear test. The
experiment results show that the curve of shear stress with shear displacement has the typical
strain-hardening behavior, and the curve of shear stress with vertical stress was linear with
Coulomb's law. When the water content was in 10% ~ 30%, the cohesion decreased with the
increasing water content while the internal friction angle increased. When the water content
was in 30% ~ 50%, the cohesion increased with the increasing water content while the
internal friction angle decreased.

KEYWORDS:

Municipal solid waste; direct shear test; water content; shear strength

parameters.

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INTRODUCTION
The municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill is an engineered geotechnical structure. The
settlement of ground surface, rainfall infiltration, leachate discharge, slope stability and bearing
capacity of foundation are the main problems of the landfill. The landslide will bring very serious
disastrous consequences. For example, the postponed closure of the Payatas landfill in Philippines
eventually caused a flow slide in 2000, which killed at least 278 persons (Kavazanjian and Merry,
2005; Koerner R. M., Soong T.Y., 2000).
Prior studies have shown that the strong rainfall is the main cause of landfill slope instability
(Tsai TL, 2008). In the rain infiltration process, shallow landslide will occur in the landfill due to
the increase of unit weight, the increase of saturation and decrease of soil matric suction in the
unsaturated zone. So, the study on effect of water content on the shear strength parameters of
shallow waste landfill is very meaningful to exploring the landfill disaster mechanism induced by
the strong rainfall. Similar to soils, the shear strength parameters normally used for waste
characterization in practice are cohesion and internal friction angle. At present, the main research
methods of shear strength parameters are experimental study and engineering back-analysis
(Kavazanjian et al., 1995; Machado et al., 2002; Tony L.T. Zhan et al., 2008). The study is
mainly about the influence of the MSW components, sample state, loading rate, stress path, MSW
density and test methods on the shear strength parameters. But, the lectures on effect of water
content on the shear strength parameters of MSW are relatively rare.
In the past, the water content of MSW of the traditional landfills in Europe and the United
States is strictly controlled in the process of design and management. At present, there is
relatively rich water content in the popular bioreactor landfills of the European and American
countries. It is shown that the water table of leachate is very high in many valley-type MSW
Landfills in Chinese Southern Region by the operating experiments in last ten years (Yunmin
Chen et al., 2008, Zhanhong Qiu et al., 2012). Due to the painful lessons in the landfill body
instability, we have recognized that the studies on the effect of water content on the shear strength
parameters are very important.
The main experimental methods of measuring the shear strength parameters of MSW are the
direct shear test, tri-axial compression test, in-situ test etc (Dixon and Jones, 2005). The direct
shear test is of simple principle and easy to operation, so this paper adopts the method. Nine
groups of remolded MSW samples with different water content are prepared for experiment to
analyze the effect of water content on the shear strength parameters.

MSW SAMPLES PREPARATION

Huangyan landfill in Taizhou city
In this paper, the MSW are drilled from Huangyan landfill which is the biggest waste valleylandfill of Taizhou city. It is located Dujia village, Chengbei streets (see Fig. 1). It was put into
operation in 2006. It covers an area of 396 acres. The total designed storage capacity is 2.61
million m3, and the service life is to be 20 years. Its daily processing capacity of MSW is 450
tons.

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Figure 1: The location of Huangyan landfill

Taizhou city is in subtropical monsoon zone, its average annual precipitation is 1632mm, and
the number of annual precipitation days of it is 132 to 171. Abundant rainfall makes the MSW
landfill easy to generate a lot of leachate in the process of operation, and the possibility of
landside is very great.

MSW sampling
The MSW is different from the general engineering soil, and its components are very
complex. The components of MSW are different in different area and country, and the physical
and mechanical properties of it are quite different too.
We drilled 6 barrels of MSW sample from the depth 1-3 meters below the surface, which is
the shallow layer of the landfill. The MSW is dried in the sun and oven. Then different
components was classed manually and weighed, which include soil, plastics, ceramics, glass and
other items. The quality percentage of each component is calculated (shown as the Table 1). It
was shown that the percentage of soil is the highest (65%). The percentage of plastics is the
second and it may have certain relation to the local development of plastic industry. The specific
gravity of each component is listed as table 1.
Because the size of natural MSW components is too large to the laboratory test, the
component of MSW is crushed or cut with scissors to a certain volume before the preparation of
MSW samples.

Table 1: MSW component and its percentage (%)

Component

soil

plastics

glass

Percentage (%)

65

19.8

6.9

3.6

1.4

2.5

1.5

Specific gravity 2.55

cloth ceramics

wood

metal

foam

bone

1.4

1.2

1.1

0.6

0.4

2.8

1.5

7.8

0.6

2.15

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Specific gravity
The MSW is composed of many kinds of materials and the specific gravity of each
component is not the same, so ordinary gravity experiment is very difficult. The specific gravity
of MSW was calculated by the following equation (ZHANG Zhen-ying, WU Chang-fu, 2009).
ds=(midsi) /mi

(1)

where ds is the specific gravity of MSW; mi is the dry weight of each component; dsi is the
specific gravity of each component.

Initial void ratio

Natural water content of MSW varies greatly in deferent landfill. The relative lectures show
that the water content ratio of MSW is between 10% and 80%. In this study, water content of
MSW samples varied from 10% to 50%, which is 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 45%,
50%. The initial void ratio can be calculated by the following equation.
e0=dsw(1+)/-1

(2)

where e0 is the initial void ratio; ds is the specific gravity of MSW; w is the density of water; is
the water content of MSW; is the density of MSW. By controlling the density of MSW, the
initial void ratio can be maintained for a fixed value.

DIRECT SHEAR EXPERIMENT

In this study, the experiment loads of direct shear experiment are 100, 200, 300, 400 kpa
respectively. The hand-wheel is rotated at six revolutions per minute uniformly and in the process
of rotation it should not break. The indicated value of the dial indicator was recorded when the
hand-wheel rotates one circle, until the dial indicator does not move forward or backward.
Because the MSW samples contain large amounts of plastics, cloth and other fiber component,
the dial indicator cant get to the peak, and the failure criterion was controlled by the shear
deformation. The experiment stops when the shear deformation reaches 4mm. The initial void
ratio (e0 ) of all samples is maintained for 2.2.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The shear stress-strain relationship
The shear strain, vertical stress and other factors have influence on the shear stress of MSW.
Through laboratory direct shear test, the curves of shear stress with shear deformation is shown in
Fig. 2.
It is shown that the shear stress increases with the increase of shear deformation and the
applied vertical stress. At the same time, the curves show a gradual hardening trend (Jonathan D.
Bray et al., 2009). MSW contains a large number of plastics, cloth and other fiber components.
Because of the shear friction on the contact surface and the tensile stress of these reinforcement
phases, the hardening trend of shear strength is very obviously in the experiment process. A

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concept similar to the fiber-reinforced composite model can be used to explain the strength
characteristics of municipal solid waste.

Figure 2: the curves of shear stress with shear deformation

The shear strength parameters

Through laboratory direct shear test, the curves of shear stress with vertical stress are shown
as Fig. 3. It is shown that the shear stress increases with the increase of applied vertical stress, and
the curve is linear with Coulomb's law.

=10%

250
Shear stress /kPa

=15%
=20%

200

=25%
150

=30%
=35%

100

=40%
=45%

50

=50%
0

100

200

300
Vertical stress /kpa

400

500

Figure 3: Variation curves with stress of shear strength

In Fig.3, the intercept of curves is the cohesion of MSW and it is marked as C, the slope of
curves is the internal friction angle cohesion of MSW and it is marked as . The value of C is
between 5.5kPa and 47.94kPa and the value of is between 9.03 and 28.65 (see Table 2).

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Table 2: Effect of different water content on shear strength parameters

w

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

C / kPa

37.12

26.84

9.61

7.165

5.5

5.56

8.67

37.33

47.94

9.03

16.95

24.19

25.43

25.38

28.65

27.51

18.72

14.35

The relationship of shear strength parameters and water

content
The experiment results show that the shear strength of MSW has very obvious relation with
the water content. The curves with water content ratio of cohension and internal friction angle
were shown as Fig. 4.
It is shown that when the water content is in 10%30%, the cohesion decreases from
37.12kPa to 5.5kPa, and when the water content is in 30%50% the cohesion increases from
5.5kPa to 47.94kPa. At the same time, when the water content is in 10%35%, the internal
friction angle increases from 9.03 to 28.65 , and when the water content is in 35%50%, the
internal friction angle decreases from 28.65 to 14.35.
Fig. 5 is the site test results of other researchers (Yunmin Chen et al., 2008). It is shown that
shear strength parameters have great relationships with the embedment depth of MSW. For a
given strain level, it was found that the value of friction angle increased with the embedment
depth of MSW, and the value of cohesion decreased with depth. It is obvious that the water
content increases with the embedment depth of MSW. By comparing Fig.4 and Fig. 5, when
water content is in 10%30%, the variation rule of shear strength parameters with water content
ratio is consistent. But, when the water content exceeds 30%, the curves with water content ratio
of cohension and internal friction angle have obvious inflection point shown as Fig. 4.
Internal friction angle /

Cohension /kPa

35
60
50
40
30
20
10

30
25
20
15
10
5
0

0
10

20

30

40

Water content (w) /%

50

60

10

20

30

40

50

60

Water content () /%

Figure 4: Variation curves of cohension and internal friction angle with water content

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a=10%

Internal fiction angle /

Cohension /kPa

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Depth /m

Figure 5: Change of shear strength parameters with the embedment depth

(Yunmin Chen et al., 2008).

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, the components of shallow municipal solid waste of the Huangyan landfill was
analyzed. The shear strength parameters with different water content were studied by direct shear
experiment. Based on the experimental results, the main following conclusions can be drawn:
(1) The curve of shear stress with shear displacement showed the typical strain-hardening
behavior, and the curve of shear stress with vertical stress was linear with Coulomb's law.
(2) When the water content was in 10%30%, the cohesion of MSW decreased with the
increasing water content while the internal friction angle increased.
(3) When the water content was in 30%50%, the soil cohesion increases\d with the
increasing water content while the internal friction angle decreased.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from research grants (No.
51108293) provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the financial
support provided by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation under Grant Y1110950, and
the financial support provided Taizhou university(2012py33).

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