Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste as Backfill Material in Reinforced Earth Wall

Abstract

The main objective of research work is to convert the existing Pirana landfill (Ahmedabad, Gujarat) municipal solid waste (MSW) into a suitable engineering backfill material for reinforced earth wall through segregation and infusement of synthetic reinforcement at suitable positions. For this purpose of evaluating the suitability of MSW as a backfill material, load settlement and load displacement tests were performed on sand, MSW, sand sandwiched (20 mm) between MSW and mixture of 1 (sand):3 (MSW) using a large- sized model test setup. Results were compared with sand being a standard backfill material. A further objective is to evaluate the effect of degree of saturation (Sr) with the optimum backfill composition found by varying the degree of saturation as 40, 50, and 60%. The results depicted a mixture of 1 (sand):3 (MSW) to be satisfactory. With the increase in the percentage of Sr, greater settlement and displacement of fill material and reinforced earth wall, respectively, were observed at lesser loads. The study reveals that mixture of 1 (sand):3 (MSW) can be recommended as suitable fill material under dry conditions.