| Geosynthetic Clay Liners (or GCLs) are often used in conjunction with a geomembrane for landfills and heap-leach pads, where their function is to minimize leakage that may occur through holes in the geomembrane. GCLs are installed with overlapping panels and powdered bentonite placed between the overlaps to provide a better seal.;To investigate the hypothesis that wet/dry cycles have the potential to cause irrevocable shrinkage of GCL panels, a total of 8 different products were tested under idealised conditions in the laboratory. Shrinkage was measured using both hand measurements and digital image correlation techniques. A number of variables were tested for their effects on panel shrinkage, including mass per unit area, size and aspect ratio, restraint, moisture content and wetting conditions, and GCL type. Wet/dry cycles were found to cause sufficient shrinkage to explain the shrinkage observed in all but one field case. The shrinkage of any particular product was found to be variable. In particular the shrinkage was found to be sensitive to the distribution of the mass of bentonite within a specimen with the highest shrinkage being observed when there was the greatest variability in mass distribution. It is shown that some GCL products are more prone to shrinkage than others.;Consideration is also given to the potential effectiveness of heat-tacking of GCL seams to reduce panel shrinkage in the field. Specimens of GCL which had been heat-tacked in the field were tested under similar cyclic conditions as used in the abovementioned laboratory tests, and the shrinkage response noted. The results indicate that such a technique has promise as a method of inhibiting shrinkage of the two products found to exhibit loss of panel overlap in published field situations. However, more work is required to confirm that this does not create other problems.;Recent field exhumations of GCLs installed beneath a geomembrane left exposed to solar radiation have shown panel shrinkage; in some cases, this shrinkage was enough to leave exposed areas unprotected by the GCL. One hypothesized cause of this shrinkage is cyclic wetting and drying of the GCL. |
