Sanitary Landfill Settlement Rates

Observed post-construction settlement records of three large sanitary landfills in Los Angeles County, California, are analyzed to identify the interrelationships between settlement rates and fill depth, length of construction period, and elapsed time measured as median fill age. The field data are then used for comparision with published field and model studies by other investigators. Preliminary conclusions of this analysis indicate the following: (1) The rate of settlement appears to decrease linearly with logarithmic median fill age; and(2) settlement rate increases with fill depth in general. However, there seems to exist a limiting depth. Greater than this limiting depth, there is no significant increase in settlement rate with further increase in depth. This depth for the cases studied is about 100 ft (30.5m).