Stability Analysis of Earth Dams in a Landfill: A Case Study

Abstract

The dam is an important structure of landfill, and its stability is vital to the landfill safety. However, due to lack of specific design specifications, the design and stability of landfill dam have been conducted based on several relevant specifications. Therefore, taking the landfill project in Hangzhou for example, stability analyses of three temporal earth dams are performed, based on limit equilibrium method (LEM) and strength reduction method (SRM). It is found that two dams are stable, while the third one is in basically stable state by LEM and in understable state by SRM, respectively. Then it is recommended that the construction should strictly follow the design requirements, backfilling simultaneously on both sides of the dam. Finally, the analytical framework or few conclusions in this paper is expected to be a reference for earth dams in landfill.