Research Initiation Award: Synthetic Turf for Advanced Engineering Landfill Closure System

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Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing research programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at the home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The award to Prairie View A&M University will support research in Civil and Environmental Engineering. The project will explore a preliminary design model that would serve as a framework to evaluate the use of synthetic turf as a landfill top cover, and will engage undergraduate students from the institution who pursue degrees and careers in Civil and Environmental Engineering.The sustainable and cost-effective design of final cover depends on the design methodology, appropriate materials selection, effective construction, and operation of the cover. Typical final cover systems employed for waste containment still have issues with construction difficulties, cost, local climatic factors, and most importantly, performance degradation over time. The fundamental objective of the proposed project is to utilize a relatively new material “Synthetic Turf” as landfill top cover and investigate if the engineered (synthetic) turf cover can improve the environmental and economical sustainability compared to the typical cover methods. The technical scope of the project includes the estimation of cover soil moisture and pore water pressure, analyzing the critical depth of soil moisture variation, investigating the field soil water characteristic curve (SWCC), examining of the effect of climatic factors on cover hydrology, and numerical modeling to simulate the field behavior of the cover systems. To determine the feasibility of the engineered turf cover and pursue the technical tasks of the project, a field pilot study will be conducted that includes side-by-side construction of three types of cover (Engineered Turf Cover, Traditional Clay Cover, and ET Cover). The field installation includes high-performance moisture and temperature sensors, tensiometers, and a weather station. The project also involves the pre-construction laboratory characterization of the cover soil to model efficient cover construction and standardize the numerical simulation. Comparison of the technical performance among different covers evaluated in this project will increase the understanding of critical factors that can impact cover hydrology and lead decision makers to choose the sustainable cover system.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.