Investigation of a method for deriving unsaturated soil hydraulic properties from water content profiles
1994
Ross, P. J. | PARLANGE, J. Y.
Hydraulic properties of unsaturated soil profiles are needed for quantitative analysis of water movement. A recently proposed method of estimating some of these properties from water content profiles after drainage was examined for a uniform soil satisfying certain constraints that allowed a new exact analytical solution to be obtained. A new analytical and numerical examination of the method, assuming correct property functional forms and boundary conditions, established that it can give good estimates of unsaturated hydraulic conductivities. If a matric potential value is available at one depth in the profile, matric potentials at other depths can also be estimated accurately. The method seemed to work reasonably well even when assumed property functions and boundary conditions had an incorrect form, although hydraulic conductivities were then in error up to 25 percent. This seemingly large error reflects the difficulty in measuring a highly variable dynamic property, like conductivity, in soils.
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