Seismic Response of Landfills

Despite the lack of well documented case histories of seismic response of landfills, some researchers have derived solid waste properties such as unit weight and initial shear wave velocity gradients by back-calculating the seismic response of some existent landfills. In this paper the results of the seismic response analyses using a finite element computer program, ADINA, are used to examine the response of solid waste landfills to seismic loading. Thus, a synthetic landfill which its geometry and dynamic properties of its material are selected based on existent information in literature is analyzed and the effects of three factors on its seismic response are studied. These factors include: 1- The peak acceleration of the input motion. 2- The width of the landfill. 3- The shear strength parameters of solid waste. The results of the analyses demonstrate that increasing the peak acceleration of the input motion, increases the values of calculated acceleration spectra in different points of the landfill. Moreover seismic response of landfills can be affected by the width of the landfill. The values of acceleration spectra decrease when the width of the landfill increases. On the other hand changing the shear strength parameters of solid waste (c,φ) don’t influence seismic response of landfills.