Combined Brooks-Corey/Burdine and van Genuchten/Mualem Closed-Form Model for Improving Prediction of Unsaturated Conductivity
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 137, Issue 4
Abstract
The performance of the widely used conventional closed-form models of Brooks and Corey and van Genuchten is restricted to soils characterized by a specific shape form of the water retention curve. Hence, the van Genuchten model more accurately describes “S”-shaped retention curves characterizing finer-textured soils, whereas the Brooks-Corey model is much better adapted for “J”-shaped retention curves characterizing relatively coarse-textured soils. In this work, a new closed-form soil hydraulic model is proposed. The suggested continuous-form function accurately describes soil retention curves irrespective of their specific shape form. New algebraic expressions based on Mualem’s statistical model and another new model that is a combination of the Mualem and Burdine theories were derived for the prediction of the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity function. Comparisons of ten soils known from international bibliography were performed. It is concluded that the proposed water retention curve expression as well as the hydraulic conductivity predictions showed significant improvement over the conventional van Genuchten and Brooks-Corey closed-form models, particularly for conductivity values near the residual water content and saturation.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Brooks, R. H., and Corey, A. T. (1964). “Hydraulic properties of porous media.” Hydrology Paper No. 3, Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO.
Burdine, N. T. (1953). “Relative permeability calculation from pore-size distribution data.” Trans. Am. Inst. Min., Metall. Pet. Eng., 198, 71–77.
Childs, E. C., and Collis-George, N. (1950). “The permeability of porous materials.” Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. A, 201, 392–405.
Elrick, D. E., and Bowman, D. H. (1964). “Note on an improved apparatus for soil moisture flow measurements.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc., 28, 450–453.
Jensen, M. E., and Hanks, R. J. (1967). “Non steady-state drainage from porous media.” J. Irrig. Drain Eng., 93(IR3), 209–231.
Kosugi, K., Hopmans, J. W., and Dane, J. H. (2002). “Parametric models.” Methods of soil analysis. Part 4: Physical methods, SSSA Book Series No. 5, Soil Science Society of America, Madison, WI.
Laliberte, G. E., Corey, A. T., and Brooks, R. H. (1966). “Properties of unsaturated porous media.” Hydrology Paper No. 17, Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO.
Leij, F. J., Alves, W. J., and van Genuchten, M. Th. (1996). The UNSODA unsaturated soil hydraulic database user’s manual version 1, U.S. Salinity Laboratory, Riverside, CA.
Lenhard, R. J., Parker, J. C., and Mishra, S. (1989). “On the correspondence between Brooks-Corey and van Genuchten models.” J. Irrig. Drain Eng., 115, 744–751.
Marquardt, D. W. (1963). “An algorithm for least-squares estimation of nonlinear parameters.” J. Soc. Ind. Appl. Math., 11, 431–441.
Mualem, Y. (1976a). “A catalogue of the hydraulic properies of unsaturated soils.” Research Project No. 442, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haiafa, Israel.
Mualem, Y. (1976b). “A new model for predicting the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated porous media.” Water Resour. Res., 12, 513–522.
Rawitz, E. (1965). “The influence of a number of environmental factors on the availability of soil moisture to plants.” Ph.D. thesis, Hebrew Univ., Rehovot, Israel.
Reisenauer, A. E. (1963). “Methods for solving problems of multi-dimensional partially saturated steady flow in soils.” J. Geophys. Res., 68, 5725–5733.
Sommer, R., and Stöckle, C. (2010). “Correspondence between the Campbell and van Genuchten soil-water-retention models.” J. Irrig. Drain Eng., 136(8), 559–562.
Valiantzas, J. D. (1994). “Simple method for identification of border infiltration and roughness characteristics.” J. Irrig. Drain Eng., 120(2), 233–249.
Valiantzas, J. D., and Kerkides, P. G. (1990). “A simple iterative method for the simultaneous determination of soil hydraulic properties from one-step outflow data.” Water Resour. Res., 26(1), 143–152.
van Genuchten, M. Th. (1980). “A closed-form equation for predicting the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soils.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 44, 892–898.
van Genuchten, M. Th., Leij, F. J., and Yates, S. R. (1991). “The RETC code for quantifying the hydraulic functions of unsaturated soils.” Res. Rep. 600 2.91 065, U.S. EPA, Ada, OK.
van Genuchten, M. Th., and Nielsen, D. R. (1985). “On describing and predicting the hydraulic properties of unsaturated soils.” Ann. Geophys., 3, 615–628.
Vogel, T., and Císlerová, M. (1988). “On the reliability of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity calculated from the moisture retention curve.” Transp. Porous Media, 3, 1–15.
Vogel, T., van Genuchten, M. Th., and Císlerová, M. (2000). “Effect of the shape of the soil hydraulic functions near saturation on variably-saturated flow predictions.” Adv. Water Resour., 24, 133–144.
Warrick, A. W. (2003). Soil water dynamics, Oxford University Press, New York.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 137 • Issue 4 • April 2011
Pages: 223 - 233
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 29, 2010
Accepted: Jul 14, 2010
Published online: Aug 31, 2010
Published in print: Apr 1, 2011
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.