Mechanical characterization of municipal solid waste from two waste dumps at Delhi, India

The article presents the physical and mechanical properties of the emplaced municipal solid waste (MSW) recovered from different locations of the Ghazipur and Okhla dumps both located at Delhi, India. Mechanical compressibility and shear strength of the collected MSW were evaluated using a 300 × 300 mm direct shear (DS) shear box. Compression ratio (Cc′) of MSW at these two dumps varied between 0.11 and 0.17 and is falling on the lower bound of the range (0.1-0.5) of the data reported in the literature for MSW. Low Cc′ of MSW is attributed to the relatively low percentages of compressible elements such as textiles, plastics and paper, coupled with relatively high percentages of inert materials such as soil-like and gravel sized fractions. Shear strength of MSW tested is observed to be displacement dependent. The mobilized shear strength parameters i.e., the apparent cohesion intercept (c′) and friction angle (ϕ′) of MSW at these two dumps are best characterized by c′ = 13 kPa and ϕ′ = 23° at 25 mm displacement and c′ = 17 kPa and ϕ′ = 34° at 55 mm displacement and are in the range reported for MSW in the literature. A large database on the shear strength of MSW from 18 countries that includes: the experimental data from 277 large-scale DS tests (in-situ and laboratory) and the data from back analysis of 11 failed landfill slopes is statistically analyzed. Based on the analysis, a simple linear shear strength envelope, characterized by c′ = 17 kPa and ϕ′ = 32°, is proposed for MSW for preliminary use in the absence of site-specific data for stability evaluation of the solid waste landfill under drained conditions.