Analysis of the compression behavior of artificial lumpy composite materials

The landfills are dumped without any compaction and have a relatively open structure, which is similar to that of the granular materials. However, the original dumped material might be gradually transformed into a lumpy composite structure because of the influence of the climate. As a result, the lumps are randomly distributed in the reconstituted soil. In the presented study, the compression behavior of the lumpy composite soils was analyzed within the homogenization framework. Firstly, the volume of the composite soil was divided into four individual components. The inter-lump porosity was introduced to account for the evolution of the volume fractions of the constituents, and it was formulated as a function of the overall porosity and those of its constituents. A homogenization law was then proposed based on the analysis of the lumpy structure together with a numerical method, which gives a relationship for tangent stiffnesses of the lumpy soil and its constituents. Finally, a simple compression model was proposed for the composite lumpy material, which incorporates both the influence of the soil structure and the volume fraction change of the reconstituted soil. The predictions of the model were validated against the test results, and the stress distribution within the lumpy composite was assessed. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.