Quantification of leakage through defects in geomembrane cover systems for mining waste

几十年来，土工膜一直被用来为泻湖和垃圾填埋场的底部提供不可渗透的密封。 虽然这些聚合物片材基本上不透气体和水，但由于聚合物的非常缓慢的劣化，在施工期间或在较长的时间段内由于损坏而出现缺陷是不可避免的。 有许多现有的方法来估计通过不同大小和形状的缺陷可能预期的泄漏量-如果缺陷是在用于基础密封的土工膜中，因此会受到稳定状态或随着时间缓慢变化的积水的影响。 土工膜越来越多地用于采矿废物的覆盖系统，覆盖面积可达数百公顷。 虽然有许多成功的此类应用的记录案例，但目前还没有合理的方法或程序来估计通过这种土工膜覆盖物（通常是倾斜的）中的缺陷从降水和径流中泄漏的量，这会导致这种缺陷上的偶然和高度瞬态的瞬态水力负荷。 这项研究与世界上最大的土工膜制造商加拿大公司Solmax合作，将为设计工程师，采矿公司和监管机构提供在UofS独特的采矿废物覆盖系统测试设施中进行全面试验的数据。这项研究将涉及创新的计算机建模工具达特将首次在这类岩土工程中实现计算流体动力学。问题.

Geomembranes have been used to provide impermeable containment for the base of lagoons and landfills for decades. While these polymer sheets are essentially impermeable to gasses and water, it is inevitable that defects arise - from damage during construction or over a longer time period as a result of the very slow deterioration of the polymer. There are a number of existing methods to estimate the amount of leakage that may be expected through a defect of varying size and shape - if the defect is in a geomembrane used for basal containment and therefore subject to a ponding of water that is steady state or changes only slowly over time. Geomembranes are increasingly used in cover systems for mining wastes - over areas that may be hundreds of hectares in size. While there are many documented cases of successful such applications, there are not, at present, rationally-based methods or procedures to estimate the amount of leakage through defects in a such a geomembrane cover (typically sloped) from precipitation and runoff which leads to occasional and highly transient transient hydraulic loading over such a defect. This study, in partnership with Solmax, a Canadian company that is the world's largest geomembrane manufacturer, will provide design engineers, mining companies and regulators with data from full scale trials in a unique mining waste cover system testing facility at the UofS Further, this study will involve innovative computer modelling tools tat will for the first time implement computational fluid dynamics in this sort of geotechnical engineering problem.