Capillary‐Tube Infiltration Model
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 119, Issue 3
Abstract
The concept of treating soil matrix as a bundle of capillary tubes was used extensively in the analytical description of hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soils. Such a concept has seldom been used in the development of infiltration models. The advantage of considering soil matrix as a collection of capillary tubes is that the water flow in large tubes can be separated from the flow in small tubes. Such a separation is desirable in the study of soil macropore flow where the flow in large pores is primarily responsible for ground‐water contamination and recharge. The purpose of this paper is to derive an infiltration model based on the concept of a bundle of capillary tubes for the study of soil macropore flow. The model presented a spatially varied wetting front and was an improvement over the Green‐Ampt infiltration model, which predicted a constant depth front. The soil macropore flow was represented graphically as a finger on a depth‐water content plot.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
1.
Brooks, R. H., and Corey, A. T. (1964). “Hydraulic properties of porous media.” Hydrology papers No. 3, Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, Colo.
2.
Burdine, N. T. (1953). “Relative permeability calculations from pore‐size distribution data.” Trans. AIME, 198(1), 71–78.
3.
Childs, E. C., and Collis‐George, N. (1950). “The permeability of porous materials.” Proc. Roy. Soc. London, Ser. A, 201, 392–405.
4.
Fok, Y. S. (1975). “A comparison of the Green‐Ampt and Philip two‐term infiltration equations.” Trans. ASAE, 18(6), 1073–1075.
5.
Green, W. H., and Ampt, G. A. (1911). “Studies on soil physics, Part I—The flow of air and water through soils.” J. Agric. Sci., 4(1), 1–24.
6.
Lappala, E. G., Healy, R. W., and Weeks, E. P. (1987). “Documentation of computer program VS2D to solve the equations of fluid flow in variably saturated porous media.” Water Resour. Investigations Report 83‐4099, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Va.
7.
Mualem, Y. (1976). “A new model predicting the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated porous media.” Water Resour. Res., 12(3), 513–522.
8.
Philip, J. R. (1957). “The theory of infiltration: 4. Sorptivity and algebraic infiltration equations.” Soil Sci., 84(3), 257–264.
9.
van Genuchten, M. T. (1980). “A closed form equation for predicting the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soils.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 44(5), 892–898.
10.
van Genuchten, M. T. (1985). “On describing and predicting the hydraulic properties of unsaturated soils.” Annals Geophys., 3(5), 615–628.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 4, 1992
Published online: May 1, 1993
Published in print: May 1993
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.