Effect of compaction characteristics on hydraulic conductivity performance for sedimentary residual soil mixed bentonite as compacted liners

Abstract

This paper discusses on the compaction effect to the hydraulic conductivity performance for the sedimentary residual soil mixed bentonite. This mixture is proposed as a barrier material in landfill area and may possibly potential materials for use as compacted soil liners in landfills for leachate protection. A laboratories series was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of compaction characteristics on sedimentary residual soil mixed with different percentage of bentonite (5%, 10% and 15%). The sedimentary residual soil sample was used in this study and was collected in sedimentary residual formation area in Salak Tinggi, Malaysia and named as Salak Tinggi soil. The mixed samples were compacted at three different compaction effort with different energy to determine the maximum dry density (MDD) and optimum moisture content (OMC). Then, the permeability test to determine the hydraulic conductivity (k) was conducted at MDD condition at every compaction effort at effective stress of 100 kPa. The results show that the MDD value were slightly low for the entire soil sample mixed with bentonite at all compaction energy level. Instead it shows all the three different compaction efforts applied to the mixed soil samples with bentonite yielded hydraulic conductivity less (k ≤ 1x10−9m/s). In fact, the increment of bentonite content also resulted in lower of MDD value and hydraulic conductivity value. However, MDD values were found to be higher for mixed soil when compacted with high compaction effort. The results of hydraulic conductivity tests demonstrated that hydraulic conductivity, k ≤ 1x10−9m/s can be achieved just by using lower compaction energy for the soil mix with bentonite. Instead it considered as suitable materials for liner due to the hydraulic requirement for soil barrier, k ≤ 1x10−9m/s. This finding show that compaction efforts play an important role for workability of the mixtures and significantly to be used as compacted of soil liner materials.