Long term performance of bituminous and modern geomembrane liners with high interface shear strength

土工合成屏障广泛用于地质环境项目，如垃圾填埋场和许多采矿应用。这些大型填充物/池塘（有时> 10 M m2）现在需要在土工合成衬垫上建造。衬垫系统通常包括在低渗透性土壤层上的聚合物土工膜，以用作防止污染物迁移到周围环境中的屏障。** 除了由于安装不良或突然施加外力造成的灾难性故障外，这些土工膜通常在短期内非常坚固。然而，由于其缓慢的老化过程（即降解），土工膜可能长期失效，导致污染物迁移到环境和/或边坡衬里的不稳定性。这两种情况都将涉及随后的重大补救费用。为了确保我们的环境在矿物开采和废物处理操作中得到保护，土工膜具有足够的已知使用寿命至关重要。今天，许多创新的土工膜被用于设计垃圾填埋场和采矿设施，很少或没有对其耐久性的支持研究。因此，战略上需要了解和评估这些土工膜的寿命，以尽量减少在安全壳设施的设计寿命（几十年至几百年）期间与环境的负面相互作用。拟议的研究将利用皇后学院独特的屏障系统评估基础设施，进行最先进的研究，研究具有高界面剪切性能的现代聚乙烯和沥青土工膜的化学耐久性。第一次，这些土工膜的性能将在剪切下进一步检查，以调查老化对垃圾填埋场和采矿设施边坡内衬界面剪切强度的影响。此外，数值模拟将与实验计划期间收集的数据一起使用，以首次检查土工膜老化对边坡衬垫岩土稳定性的影响。**这项研究旨在建立一个基于证据的严格理解目前市场上提供的土工膜的性能，并将依赖于保护我们的环境在未来几十年/几个世纪。这种理解将有利于加拿大土工合成社区（顾问，制造商，监管机构）实现更好的屏障系统设计，并通过保护我们的地表和地下沃茨免受污染，同时建立最有效的资源和税收利用公众。该计划将培养3名博士，2名硕士和4名本科生，这些学生将涉及在土工合成衬里性能评估中进行独特实验和前沿分析技术的技能，他们将把自己独特的知识和技能带到工业和学术界。

Geosynthetic barriers are widely used in geoenvironmental projects such as landfills and many mining applications. These mega fills/ponds (sometimes >10M m2) are now required to be constructed on geosynthetic liners. The liner systems often comprise a polymeric geomembrane over a low permeability soil layer to function as a barrier against contaminant migration into the surrounding environment. ******Aside from catastrophic failures due to poor installation or sudden application of external forces, these geomembranes are typically robust in the short term. However, geomembranes can fail in long term due to their slow aging process (i.e. degradation) resulting in contaminant migration to the environment and/or the instability of the side slope liner. Either would involve major subsequent remediation costs. To ensure that our environment is protected during mineral extraction and waste disposal operations, it is critical that geomembranes have an adequate and known service life. Today, many innovative geomembranes are offered for designing landfills and mining facilities with little to no supporting research on their durability. Thus, there is a strategic need to understand and evaluate the longevity of these geomembranes to minimize negative interactions with the environment during the design life of the containment facility (several decades to centuries).******The proposed research will capitalize on the unique barrier system evaluation infrastructure available at Queen's to conduct novel state of the art research examining the chemical durability of modern polyethylene and bituminous geomembranes with high interface shear properties. For the first time, the performance of these geomembranes will be further examined under shear to investigate the effect of aging on the interface shear strength of the liner on the side slopes of landfill and mining facilities. Furthermore, numerical modeling will be used with the data collected during the experimental program to examine, for the first time, the effect of aging of the geomembrane on the geotechnical stability of the side slope liners.******This research aims to establish an evidence based rigorous understanding of the performance of geomembranes offered today in the market and will be relied on to protect our environment for the coming decades/centuries. This understanding will benefit the Canadian geosynthetic community (consultants, manufacturers, regulators) in achieving better design for barrier systems, and the public by protecting our surface and ground waters against contamination while establishing the most efficient use of resources and tax dollars. This program will train 3 PhD, 2 MSc, and 4 undergraduate students that will involve skills in conducting unique experiments and leading-edge analysis techniques in performance evaluation of geosynthetic liners, who will carry their unique knowledge and skills to industry and academia.