Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology 2(5): 466-475, 2010 ISSN: 2040-7467 © M axwell Scientific Organization, 2010 Submitted Date: June 13, 2010 Accepted Date: July 03, 2010 Published Date: August 10, 2010 Ground Investigation into the Hydro-Geotechnical Characteristics of a Municipal Waste Fill Using Static Cone Penetration Tests 1,2 1 Olayiwola A.G. Oni Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ado-Ekiti, Ado Ek iti, Nigeria, West Africa 2 Proworks Ltd., 13 Newman Street, Southampton, UK Abstract: This study describes the procedure used to undertake Cone Penetration Tests (CPTs) on the municipal solid w aste landfill at W hite’s pit, W imborne, UK. The results of the CPTs were interpreted and analysed in the context of the usefulness of the tests for determining the geo-environmental properties of the emplaced waste. The general hydro-physical characteristics of the emplaced w aste are com parab le to sand/silt mixtures, with no dynamic pore pressure. Although CPTs may not be appro priate for determ ining accura te quantification of the hydro-physical properties of an emplaced waste, it may be suitable for a general characterisation of the waste fill in relations to the soil type behaviour, especially at old sites with no historical data of the type of materials that were emplaced. This finding will significantly enhance the decisions of geoenvironmental engineers in field investigations concerning waste fills. Key w ords: Cone pene tration tests, landfill, friction ratio, characterisation, municipal waste, dynam ic pore pressure old unregulated refuse fill will surely enhance the plann ing of the after-use of su ch a landfill. Site investigation is a process whereby all the relevant information that may influence the construction or performance of a proposed civil engineering or building project and its adjacent area is acquired. In most cases, it involves determining the surface and subsurface conditions of such areas so as to enhance the planning construction techniques thereby ensuring that the development and its eventual use will be safe and sustainable. Among the key actions undertaken in site investigations are: INTRODUCTION The general human desire to buy new things and discard old things means that the land fill of solid w aste in landfills or dumps will likely continue to exist notwithstanding any governmental efforts to reduce waste produced by mankind. The inevitable disposal of municipal solid waste has resulted in the creation of many regulated and unregulated landfill sites in all the countries of the world. Owing to recent strict regulations requiring the formidable sealing (lining) of waste disposa l units in developed coun tries, the m ain concern now is the potential damage that may be caused by old landfills, that were previously unlined and also the refuse dumps that are still being scattered all over feasible o r unfea sible places in the undeveloped countries. Aside from pollution in old landfills (Ball and Blight, 1986; Kjeldsen, 1993; Kjeldsen et al., 1998; Ahmed and Sulaiman, 2001; Al-Tarazi et al., 2008; Eslam et al., 2008 ), waste mass instability often cause catastrophic flow slides in landfills as happened in Turkey in 1993 for the UmraniyeHekimbasi refuse dum p (Kocasoy an d Curi, 199 5) and in the Payatas landfill disaster in Philippines in 2000, which killed at least 278 persons (Kavazanjian and Merry, 2005). Owing to the absence o r incom plete historical data of refuse infilling at the majority of old landfill sites, site investigation s are often un dertak en to characterise the emplaced waste in an attemp t to know its potential for pollution and stability (O ni, 2000; M atasovic et al., 2006). In countries with limited land space for developm ent, such as the UK, the characterisation of an C C C C C C C C C Preliminary d esk stu dy; Air photog raph interpretation; W alk-over survey Evaluate hazard and start the risk register; Undertak e subsurface (grou nd) ex ploration; Undertake laboratory and field tests to determine design para meters; Evaluation of data and g eotechnica l design ; Report w riting; Review design and undertake further site visits, if necessary (Clayton et al., 1995, Simons et al., 2002). The aim of any gro und inv estigation is to determ ine (Lunne et al., 1997): C C C 466 Nature and sequence of the subsurface strata; Groundw ater conditions, Physical and mechanical properties of the subsurface strata Res. J. Appl. Sci. Eng. Technol., 2(5): 466-475, 2010 lower values. The results thus conclud ed an increase in shear strength with depth owing to overburden and age of deposit in the unsaturated zone. The constant tip and sleeve resistances observed in the saturated zone show that the effective stress in this zone is constant as a result of the effect of pore pressure on the em placed waste. This is in line with the classic Terzaghi theorem on bulk stress, pore pressu re, and effective stress (Te rzaghi, 1936 ). In this study, the ground investigation on the in situ characterisation of the emplaced solid w aste at W hite’s Pit, Canford, Poo le UK using CPTs is discussed. The difficulty envisaged in undertaking CPTs at the site was seen as a challenge rather than a deterrent, and as suc h, a sizeable number of CPTs were undertaken at the site to give allowance for drilling failures. Unlike before, the study landfill comprises variety of municipal wastes from inert to biodegradable materials. Furthermore, it does not only involve the assessment of the cone resistance, the sleeve friction, and dynamic water pressure, but the general characterisation of the soil behaviour type as recommended by Robertson et al. (1986). Although the result of one of the sixteen locations of the CPT was previously summarised (O ni and Okunade, 20 09), this was seen as a misrepresentation, thus resulting in extensive analysis and report of the entire investigation in this study. Among the techniques used for ground investigations are: C C C Test pits Boreholes Cone pe netration tests Although the use of test pits and b oreholes is prevalent in site investigations, perhaps the m ain issue with these tests is the disturbance of the samples acquired for laboratory testing (Powrie, 2004). In contrary, Cone Penetration Tests (CPTs) enable the determination of continuous in situ properties of the ground materials to be obtained. The cone penetration was developed in Netherlands and was originally used as a means of locating and evaluating the density of sand layers with the deltaic clay formation (Simons et al., 2002). Generally, a cone penetration test comprises a cone at the end of series of rods pushed onto the ground at a steady rate, usually at 15-25 mm/s and the resistance is measured by means of load cells behind the cone, and the force owing to side friction immediately above the cone is measured using a friction sleeve. Cone penetration tests are commonly used in soils for various purposes (Blouin et al., 1979; Aldstadt and Martin, 1997; R ossabi et al., 2000; Juang et al., 2003) but are less common in waste fills (Rifai et al., 2002; Zhan et al., 2008 ). Som e investigation s on so lid wa ste fills have found that drilling may be possible in finegrained fills but however be significantly difficult through emplaced municipal waste comprising variety of constituents due to the obstructions that may occur as a result of hard large w aste co nstituen ts, owing to hetero geneity of MSW fill, often resulting in many trials than in soil (Landva and Clark, 1990). Perhaps the most notab le previous CPT undertaken on MSW landfill was at Suzho ur, China. The landfill comprises mainly fine cinders and d ust, which is a classical exam ple of solid waste fill in which Landva and Clark (1990) reported suitable for cone penetration tests. The CPT, which was conventional electrical cone with a 43.7 mm diameter cone-shaped tip w ith an apex angle of 60º, was used at two location s, and penetrated MSW waste fills of ages 0-6.8 years and 6.8-12 .8 years, respectively (Zhan et al., 2008). The rate of penetration was controlled at approximately 20mm/s, with the cone resistance and side friction resistance recorded at intervals of 50 mm. The results sh ow a general increase in the tip resistance, q c , and sleeve resistance, f s , with depth, especially in the unsaturated zone . In the older w aste de posit (i.e., 6.8-12.8 years), the average tip resistance against the municipal solid wastes generally varied from 1 to 8MPa, with the midd le values mostly lying in between 2 and 4 MPa. The values of sleev e resistance, f s , varied from 5 0 to 300 kPa with the middle values between 80 and 250 kPa for the older waste deposit. The same behavioural trend was observed for the younger deposit, however with much METHODS Study area: The study site is the W hite’s Pit landfill (British National Grid SZ030971), w hich lies approxim ately 6km north of Poole and about 8km northwest of Bo urnemou th. The site, w hich was formed from mineral excavation, is bordered by a wooded area with sparse residen tial structures in the north, and by 800 acres of the Canford Heath Site of Special Scientific Interest, one of the largest surviving fragments of lowland heath in the south of UK. The topographical map of the site drawn using U NIM AP software (U NIR AS, 1989) is shown in Fig. 1. The site consists of an old “dilute and disperse” landfill area, and a new er con tainment landfill area. The dilute and disperse area occupies the no rthern part of the site and it comprises the biodegradable fill area and the inert fill area. A drainage ditch drains surface water into a wastewater pond. There is a lake, gas production wells, and leachate-monitoring wells located within and o utside the landfill. There are on-site infrastructure including a power station, two office buildings, a workshop, and a recycling facility that is located to the south of the site, which pro duces metals for re-use, soil and hardcore for landscaping and construction, and paper and wood for composting. The site including a new comp osting facility, called New Earth Solutions Limited, is owned by W H W hite Plc (1996) group of waste managem ent companies although the remaining space for refuse landfill has been leased to B iffa W aste Services Ltd. since the 90s. 467 Res. J. Appl. Sci. Eng. Technol., 2(5): 466-475, 2010 Fig. 1: Topographical map of White’s Pit landfill (Oni, 2000). Fig. 2: The waste thickness and locations for cone penetration tests (Oni, 2000) Geology: The site is situated in the Poole Formation of the Palaeocene system. The Poole Formation comprises an alternating sequence of fine to very coarse-grained, locally pebbly, cross-bedded sands, and pale grey to dark brown, carbo nace ous, comm only lamina ted locally red-stained, clays and silty clays. The sands generally are thicker than the clays and occu py ap proximately two-thirds of the area where the formation outcrops (Freshney et al., 1985). Analysis of the borehole logs from the ground investigation undertaken at the site (MacDonald, 1990 a, b) indicates that the landfill is underlain by Rive r Terrace deposits of the Quaternary period over d eposits of Po ole formation of the Palaeocene system. The clays of the Poole Formation present in the pit are Parkstone clay and Broadstone clay. The sequence of the formation from the surface is thus River Terrace Deposit; Parkstone Clay; Sand; and Broadstone Clay. As the void used for refuse infilling was initially created from sand quarrying, the w aste is thus unde rlain by Broadstone, which has an a ve ra ge thic kness of 15 m at the site (MJ Carter Associates, 1989; M acD onald, 199 0a, b; Dorset Drilling Services, 1994, 1996). A laboratory test of undisturbed samples from the ground investigation indicates that the Broadstone clay at the site has approxim ate values of moisture content of 0.2; bu lk density of 20 00 kg/m 3 ; and hydraulic conductivity in the order of 10 - 1 0 m/s (Oni, 2000). Disp osal: Approximately 330,000 tonnes of controlled municipal waste, mainly from Dorset area are landfilled annually at the site (WH W hite Plc., 1996). Infilling of refuse started at the site in 1977 with inert waste and commercial waste, followed by waste tipping of biode gradable materials between 1982 and 1989. The infill phases are indicated as A-H in Fig. 2. Clay capping of the biodegradable fill area was completed in 1990. 468 Res. J. Appl. Sci. Eng. Technol., 2(5): 466-475, 2010 Tab le 1: S um mar y of con e pe netra tion te sts Tes t poin ts Depth (m) Cone type Co mm ents TP 1 6.8 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust TP 2 6.22 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust TP 3 3.33 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust and inclination TP 4 5.86 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust TP 5 2.83 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust, concrete obstruction TP 6 S10 CFI 083 No test TP 7 10 .1 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust and inclination TP 8 2.29 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust and inclination TP 9 1.03 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust TP 10 2.61 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust and inclination TP 11 8.81 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust and inclination TP 12 10.14 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust and inclination TP 13 1.5 S10 CFI 083 Pre-push TP 14 7.65 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust and inclination TP 15 1.83 S10 CFI 083 Excessive total thrust and inclination TP 16 0.99 S15CFI 023 Excessive penetrometer inclination S10: 10 cm 2 Subtraction type calibrated over 10 tonne range; S15: 15 cm 2 Subtraction type calibrated over 15 tonne range; CFIP: Co ne , friction, inclination. The last three digits denote the cone serial number Static cone penetration tests: These tests w ere undertaken using a twenty ton ne capacity hydraulic penetrometer that is mounted on a lightweight crawler ballasted to provide a nominal reaction of ap proximately 7000 kg. The cone end resistance and local side friction are registered by load cells in the cone and transmitted by an umb ilical cable through hollow push rods to a computerised data acquisition system (GEOCONE, 1998). The rate of co ne pe netration was constant at 20 mm /s except where penetration w as in very dense or hard strata. The total load application for safe working was governed by the in situ reaction to the cone penetration. The measurement of the cone end resistance and local side friction of the em placed waste was accomplished through both 10 and 15 cm 2 tonne capacity two channel electric friction cone. The electro-mechanical coupling of the system enab les instantane ous and co ntinuous graphical records of cone end resistance and local side friction to be visualised on a colou r video mo nitor. The tests were terminated at any location where a combination of the following conditions occurred: C C C C C C Specialty Conference In Situ’86: Use of In Situ Tests in Geotechnical Engineering, Blacksburg, US (Robertson et al., 1986). The summary of the drill operations of the CPT equipment is shown in Table 1. There was no test at point 6 owing to unfavourable ground condition - hard strata close the ground surface. In most cases, the tests were terminated as a result of excessive forceful push, and inclination of the cone close to unacceptable limits, as defined in the test procedure. The results of the cone penetration tests are show n in Fig. 3 to 9 for penetrations greater than 3 m. The result of the cone penetration at TP 11, which has been initially summarised (Oni and Okunade, 2009), but slight misrepresented has been correc tly analysed in this stud y. The depiction shows the co ne pe netration, q c , and the friction resistance fs , expressed as a ratio of the friction ratio, R f, and the resultant soil behaviour type. The dynamic pore water pressure is also shown for TP 3 and TP 4. Owing to the heterogeneity of the emplaced waste, the observations of the CPT at each test point are individually discussed. The cone resistance at TP 1 varies trem endously with the depth of cone pene tration. There are extreme values of q c at about three instances within the depth. These are likely caused by pene tration thro ugh hard w aste componen ts, such as woods, bricks etc. The random nature of its occu rrence with depth of penetration is owing to the heterogeneity of the waste. The fluctuation of the sleeve resistance du e to encountered sleeve friction, f s is implicated in the fluctuation of the friction ratio (R f) with the depth. If these extreme values are ignored, it could be observed that there appears to be an insignificant increase in q c with d epth in the unsaturated zone, and the saturated zone, which is the depth below 3 m from ground level (G.L.). The average q c appears to vary between 0.5-2 MPa and the R f appears to be constant at approximately 2%. The deduced average soil behaviour indicates that the soil type is sand/gravelly san d in the depth 0-1 m ; and is mainly silt mixtures/sand mixtures in the depth 1-6.8 m. High load (determined according to degree of rebound of test string) High load on the cone tip (generally 90% of rated capacity or suspected eccentric loading) High load on the friction sleeve (generally 90% of rated capacity or suggested eccentric loading) Excessive inclination of the cone and test string (3 degrees or rapid inclination in any stroke Upon reaching a depth specified to the client The overriding criterion to the above is to stop drilling when there is likelihood for any dam age to the equipm ent. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The results of the static cone penetration tests have b e e n interpreted in to soil typ es usin g th e recommendations stated in the Proceedings of ASCE 469 Res. J. Appl. Sci. Eng. Technol., 2(5): 466-475, 2010 Fig. 3: The cone resistance, friction ratio and soil behavior type at various depths at TP 1 Fig. 4: The cone resistance, friction ratio and soil behavior type at various depths at TP 2 The average qc at TP 2 appears to vary from 1-2 MPa, with two extreme values in the depth 0-1m and the dep th whe re the penetration en ded, w hich are neglected. The q c appears to be constant with depth at an average valu e of 1 MPa in the unsaturated zone. Similar to TP 1, there are fluctuations in the R f with depth, and the average constant value seem s to be 2% . The soil behaviour type in the depth 0-1 m is gravelly san d/very dense stiff sand and silt mixture/sand mixture in the depth below 1m. The pene tration of TP 3 is relatively small compared to TP 1 and TP 2. If the three extreme values of q c are neglected, the average qc is approximately 1 and app ears to be constant with the depth of penetration, w hich is mainly in the unsaturated zone. Similar to TP 1 and TP 2, the R f seems constant, at approximately 2% throughout the depth. The soil behaviour type deduced with these data is sand mixtures/gravelly sand. The measured dynamic pore pressure (u) within the depth of penetration is constant, at just less than 0.1 M Pa, ind icative of no excess pore p ressure, as it is expected in the vadose zone of the non-clayey porous media. The dynamic pore pressure is also measured at the penetrations at TP 4. The measured u, is as in TP 3, just less than 0.1M Pa an d is constant throughout the saturated and the unsaturated zone of penetration. There appears to be hard w aste constituents in the depth 0-2 m and the average q c appears to be constant, at abou t just less than 1 MPa, in the unsaturated zone , and there appears to be an insignificant increase in the q c , to just more than 1 MPa in the saturated zone. As b efore, R f has a lot of fluctuation and is at a constant average value of 2 MPa with depth, thus indicative of the fluctuation of f s . The soil behaviour type 470 Res. J. Appl. Sci. Eng. Technol., 2(5): 466-475, 2010 Fig. 5: The cone resistance, friction ratio, dynamic pore water pressure, and soil behavior type at various depths at TP 3 Fig. 6: The cone resistance, friction ratio, dynamic pore water pressure, and soil behavior type at various depths at TP 4 is mainly silt mixtures/sand mixtures/sands, except in the top soil depth of 1m where it is gravelly sand. The cone pene tration at T P 7 is among the deepest, out of the CPTs undertaken at the site. There are several varied fluctuations of q c with depth in both the unsaturated and unsaturated zones of ground penetration. If the extreme values are ignored, it appears that the average q c is constant throughout the depth of penetration, at appro ximately 1 MPa. Likewise, the R f, has a constant mean value of 2% if the extreme fluctuations are ignored throughout the entire depth of cone pene tration. The soil behaviour type for the depth 0-2 m is mainly sands w hile 471 Res. J. Appl. Sci. Eng. Technol., 2(5): 466-475, 2010 Fig. 7: The cone resistance, friction ratio, and soil behavior type at various depths at TP 7 Fig. 8: The cone resistance, friction ratio, and soil behavior type at various depths at TP 11 the type in depth below 2 m is mainly silt mixtures/sand mixtures. The average qc of the cone penetration at TP 11 fluctuates greatly in the unsaturated zone, compared to the unsaturated zone. The qc at the unsaturated zone seem s to be slightly greater than zero but lea than 0.5 M Pa. It appears that there is a pattern of a slight increase in the values of q c up to approxima tely 3 M Pa, if excessiv ely high values are neglected. U nlike before, there is a high variation in the values of R f, indicating a high variation in the values of f s with depth. Even with the extreme fluctuations, it seems that R f has a mean value of 2%. Except for the depth 2-3 m that seems to be of clays, the soil behaviour type for the rest of the pe netration, up to 8.8 m depth is mainly silt mixtures/sand m ixtures. There is significa nt variability in the q c and R f of the waste at TP 12, which is the deepest cone penetration undertaken at the site. Ignoring the extreme cone 472 Res. J. Appl. Sci. Eng. Technol., 2(5): 466-475, 2010 Fig. 9: The cone resistance, friction ratio, and soil behavior type at various depths at TP 12 resistance values, the average q c appe ars to be just less than 0.5 MP a in the unsaturated zone, and appears to slightly increase up to 3MPa below the depth of 3 m, in the unsaturated zone. The mean value of the R f is approxim ately 2%. The soil behaviour type is mainly soils in the depth 0-2 m; silt mixtures in depth 3-5 m and mainly sand mixtures in the rest of the depth of cone penetration. C In general, it is deduced from the CP Ts that: C There are extreme values of both the cone resistance and the sleeve resistance as deduced from the friction ration, at random spots w ithin the depth of penetration, and therefore reasonable values of average q c and fs could only be inferred if these extreme values are ignored for both the saturated and unsa turated zone s of the waste fill C The mean cone resistance and the mean sleeve resistance, as deduced from the friction ration, are significa ntly variable with the depth of cone penetration at the test points. While the cone resistance appears to be constant with depth in saturated and unsaturated zones of emplaced waste at some points, it also appe ars to slightly increase with depth in saturation and unsaturated zones of other points. This implies that an increase in effective stress with overburden, which is applicable to soils and also observed in fine grained w aste fills (Zhan et al., 2008) is inconclusive from the results, C 473 thus indicating that the stress characteristics in emplaced waste comprising household waste may not be determined or inferred from the results of CPTs. In com parison to average cone resistance ranging from 1 to 8 MPa and friction ratio rangin g from 4 to 6% in municipal inert waste comprising construction waste materials (fine cinders and dust), the mean cone resistance in the municipal waste comprising inert and biodegradable materials, as in this study, ranges from > 0 to 3 M Pa an d the m ean friction ratio appears to be approximately 2%. This suggests that the bulk of the emplaced waste at the area where the CPTs were undertaken at W hite’s pit have in situ particle density less than in w aste co mprising m ainly of construction waste. Furthermore, it suggests that the overburden, effective stresses and shear stress of the emp laced waste at the site are less than that in fills comprising inert fine waste materials. This appears sensib le as the CPTs were undertaken in the biode gradable area of the landfill. Using the recommendations stated by Robertson et al. (1986), it is observed that the soil behaviour type for top “c ap” soil on the waste fill is sand y/grav elly sand and the soil be haviour type of the waste formation is silt mixture/ sand mixture/sand. This appears reasonable as the in situ hydraulic properties of various municipal w aste comprising household waste have been found to be similar to soils exhibiting the general soil behaviour type derived from the CPTs in this study Res. J. Appl. Sci. Eng. Technol., 2(5): 466-475, 2010 C (Ettala, 1987; Ow eis et al., 1990; Powrie and Beaven, 1999; Oni, 2000; Reddya et al., 2009). The dynamic pore pressure appears constant in the zones above and below the water table. The absence of excess pore pressure in the areas below the water table suggests a soil behaviour type similar to sands and less clayey. It also suggests low content of clay in the materials used as daily (intermediate) so il cover. Al-T arazi, E., J.A. Rajab, A. Al-Naqa and M . El-W aheid i, 2008. Detecting leachate plumes and groundwater pollution at Ruseifa m unicipal landfill utilizing VLFEM m ethod. J. Appl. Geophys., 65: 121-131. Ball, J.M. and G.E. Blight, 1986. Groundwater pollution downstream of a long estab lished sanitary landfill. Proc e e dings , I n t e rn a tiona l Sympos ium o n Environmental Geotechnology, Allentown, pp: 149-157. Blouin, S.E., E.J. Chamberlain, P.V. Sellmann and D.E. Garfield, 1979. Determining subsea permafrost characteristics with a cone penetrometer-prudhoe bay, Alaska. Cold Reg. Sci. Technol., 1: 3-16. Clayton, C.R.I., M.C. M atthews and N. Simons, 1995. Site Investigation. Blackwell Science Ltd., Oxford. Dorset Drilling Services, 1994. Borehole Logs for W hite’s Pit Lan dfill. Magna Ro ad, W imborne, Dorset. Dorset Drilling Services, 1996. Borehole Logs for W hite’s Pit Landfill. Magna Road, Wimborne, Dorset. Eslam, A., E.A. Al-Hogaraty, Z.S. Rizk and H.K. Garamoon, 2008. Groundwater pollution of the quaternary aquifer in Northern United Arab Emirates. W ater Air Soil Poll., 90: 323-341. Ettala, M., 1987. Infiltration and hydraulic conductivity at a Sanitary Landfill. Aqua Fennica, 17(2): 231-237. Freshney, E.C., C.R., Bristow, B.J. Williams and R.A. Monkhouse, 1985. Geology of bournemouth-poolewimborne, dorset (Sheet SZ 09). Geological report for DOE: Land use planning. British Geological Survey , Exeter. GEOCONE, 1998. Final report on static cone penetration tests, W hite’s pit lan dfill, Magna Road, W imborne Dorset. Juang, C.H., H. Yuan, D.H. Lee and P.S. Lin, 2003. Simplified cone penetration test-based method for evaluating liquefaction resistance of soils. J. Geotech. Geoenvir. Eng., 129(1): 66-80. Kavazanjian, E. and S.M. Merry, 2005. The 10 July 2000 Payatas landfill failure. proceedings of sardinia '0510th international symposium waste management and landfill (CD R OM ), Cagliari, Italy, Paper No: 431. Kjeldsen, P., 1993. Groundwater pollution source characterisation of an old landfill. J. Hydrol., 412: 349-371. Kjeldsen, P., A. Grundtvig, P. Winther and J.S. Andersen, 1998. Characterization of an old mu nicipal landfill (Grindsted, Denma rk) as a groundw ater, pollution source: landfill history an d leachate comp osition. W aste Manage. Res., 16(1): 3-13. Kocasoy, G. and K. Curi, 1995. The Ümraniye-Hekimbai open dump accident. Waste Manage. Res., 13(4): 305-314. CONCLUSION In conc lusion, the stud y has show n that the use of CPTs for determining the hydro-geotechnical properties of the em placed waste layers comprising biodeg radab le materials at a landfill site may be tedious and not give accu rate results as desired. However, if the extreme values of the cone resistance and sleeve resistance are ignored, an average soil behaviour type of the various subsurface strata of the waste may be deduced using the recommendations of Robertson et al. (1986) from average values of the cone and sleeve resistances. In addition, comparison of these average values with tip resistance and sleeve friction of the CPTs undertaken in fine grained waste fills may infer sign ificant information concerning the particle density of the waste, overburden stress, shear stress, which could not be inferred directly from CPTs in the emplaced biodegradable waste. Aside from classification of old landfills, the findings have show n that CPTs m ay no t be economical for field determination of hydro-physical properties of MSW landfill. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author is most grateful to Prof David Richards and Dr Richard Bea ven, both of the D epartm ent of C ivil Engineering, University of Southampton UK for the financial assistan ce and opportunity to be invo lved in investigations on M SW fills in the w orld-class W aste Group of the department, following his doctoral studies. This gesture has been con tinuou sly recip rocated with publications of qua lity articles on mu nicipal waste fills for globa l dissem ination (“M erci”). REFERENCES Ahmed, A.M . and W .N. Sulaiman, 2001. Evaluation of groundwater and soil pollution in a landfill area using electrical resistivity imaging survey. Environ. Manag e., 28(5): 655-6 63. Aldstadt, J.H. and A.F. Martin, 1997. 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