NUMERICAL MODELING OF URBAN SOLID WASTE GEOTECHNICAL BEHAVIOR APPLIED TO SANITARY LANDFILLS

• Grant number: 24/18122-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: March 01, 2025
• End date: March 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Civil Engineering - Geotechnical Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Roger Augusto Rodrigues
• Grantee: Caio Henrique Buranello dos Santos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Engenharia (FE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Bauru. Bauru , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is the construction material of sanitary landfills, making the study of its mechanical behavior crucial for: designing safer and more economical projects, operating the landfill safely, predicting the sanitary landfill useful life, and planning land use and occupation in the post-closure phase of the landfill. MSW is a heterogeneous composite waste consisting of various materials, many of which undergo biodegradation, leading to changes in its mechanical behavior within the landfill, in addition to the generation of gases and leachate. However, the application of constitutive models for simulating and predicting the behavior of these materials has been limited by the lack of validated models capable of reproducing the main trends and phenomena inherent to the material. Given the high generation of waste and the consequent need for its final disposal in sanitary landfills, it is evident the importance of understanding the mechanical behavior of waste. In this context, constitutive models for MSW in computer codes are essential for numerical simulations of landfills. Therefore, this project aims to implement and validate, within the finite element program CODE_BRIGHT, a mechanical constitutive model that accounts for the biodegradation of MSW. The validation of the implementation will occur, initially, with the simulation of laboratory test results and subsequently by simulating the monitoring data from a real-scale landfill.