Abstract
In this study, the author took both exposed and buried sheet samples from a landfill after more than 20 years from the time of construction, evaluated the durability and clarified the factors of degradation of geomembrane based on data from microscopy, tensile test, chemical analysis and so on. The result showed that there was certainly some decrease in value in each direction and a big difference in data between the south-facing sheet and the virgin sheet. The buried sheet sample was not degraded compared to exposed sheet. Even in the same direction, surface cracks occurred more on the exposed sheet than on the buried sheet. Moreover, based on the test results, we considered that the total amount of solar radiation is a major cause of degradation.
