ABSTRACT
This paper presents a case study of a geomembrane liner design in a mining area for contaminant waste disposal. The presented study involves the need to store steel slag on soft soil foundation that presents a low bearing capacity. The stored material is granular contaminant material with high permeability and high density. Thus, it was necessary to carry out a stress-strain study on a Finite Element Model, followed by an empirical-analytical verification to assess the feasibility of the waste pile construction. The study predicted a maximum strain of 12%, resulting on maximum displacements of 1.4 m. An implementation of plastic geomembranes was proposed considering the need to promote a flow barrier faced to the increasing applications bias of geosynthetics in mining industry. Furthermore, based on the foundation consolidation process under the steel slag waste pile, Linear Low-Density Polyethylene was considered as required by the large expected strains.
