Evaluation of Decomposition Effect on Long-Term Settlement Prediction for Fresh Municipal Solid Waste Landfills

A considerable amount of settlement occurs due to the decomposition of municipal solid waste (MSW) in landfills over a period of years. Therefore, the effect of biological decomposition governs the long-term settlement characteristics of municipal solid waste landfills. In this study, we investigated the long-term settlement characteristics by applying a number of prediction methods to fresh MSW sites and predicting the settlement curves. Most proposed methods, excluding the power creep law, successfully predicted long-term settlement only if accelerated logarithmic compression due to decomposition of biodegradable MSW was included in the settlement prediction.