Effect of Apparent Cohesion on Translational Failure Analyses of Landfills

The scope of this paper is to develop a new analysis method introducing the effect of apparent cohesion of the waste and/or liner materials on the translational failure of landfills. The apparent cohesion of the liner materials seriously affects the factor of safety (FS), especially for a liner interface with a low friction angle and high apparent cohesion. Obtaining accurate and reliable apparent cohesion for various liner materials becomes an important approach for translational failure analysis. The relationship between B and FSave for c>0 is different with that for c=0. Using an equivalent friction angle to represent the apparent cohesion of the liner materials may lead to an unsafe result. Also, a waste filling sequence, to keep the FS above a stipulated value during the landfilling process, can be generated. The values of FSV/FSave varies between 1.9 and 2.1 and are concentrated around 2.0 when FSave⩾0.95. The approximate solutions of FS with adequate accuracy can be obtained by assuming FSV=2.0⋅FS when FS⩾0.95.