Quantifying geomembrane wrinkles using aerial photography and digital image processing

Abstract

Geomembranes are highly effective barriers, and are often a key component in the design of composite landfill liner and cover systems. During installation, solar exposure causes some types of geomembrane to buckle locally upwards and form networks of wrinkles (sometimes referred to as waves). These wrinkle networks may be significant in terms of increasing leakage through this barrier system if there is a hole at or near the wrinkle. In this paper, a novel method to quantify geomembrane wrinkles in the field is reported using low-altitude aerial digital photography and image processing techniques. The results of the analysis indicate that, at the date and time the aerial image was captured, the geomembrane contained 100 major wrinkles, which covered 13.9% of the total area of the exposed geomembrane. More importantly from a potential leakage perspective, over 90% of these wrinkles were found to be hydraulically connected over the entire field of view of the exposed geomembrane. This one hydraulically connected wrinkle was found to have an aggregate length of 520 m.