Bentonite Mass Per Unit Area Requirements for Geosynthetic Clay Liners (GCLs) and Related Topics for Multi-Component GCLs

摘要

Since over 20 years Geosynthetic Clay Liners (GCLs) – also known as Geosynthetic Clay Barriers (GBR C) have been successfully installed and used in many sealing applications. After growing confidence for the sealing system GCLs are capable of substituting most compacted clay liners or sand/bentonite soils. A topic which has never been really investigated or published is the realistic bentonite minimum mass per unit area requirements of the GCL components. This paper will concentrate and present data on the bentonite layer showing what the lowest mass per unit area of the bentonite layer must be to allow the GCL to achieve the usually quoted manufacturers hydraulic performance value (typically index flux, permittivity and hydraulic conductivity). However, the mass per unit area is an important factor, especially if calculating from index flux to hydraulic conductivity. The next phase for GCLs is multi-component GCLs. Here typically polymeric barriers are attached to the GCL.