Column-scale unsaturated hydraulic conductivity estimates in coarse-textured homogeneous and layered soils derived under steady-state evaporation from a water table

Morteza Sadeghi, Markus Tuller, Mohammad R. Gohardoust, Scott B. Jones

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

35 Scopus citations

Abstract

Steady-state evaporation from a water table has been extensively studied for both homogeneous and layered porous media. For layered media it is of interest to find an equivalent homogeneous medium and define "effective" hydraulic properties. In this paper a new solution for steady-state evaporation from coarse-textured porous media is presented. Based on this solution, the evaporation rate represents a macroscopic (column-scale) measure of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity at the pressure head equal to the maximum extent of the hydraulically connected region above the water table. The presented approach offers an alternative method for determination of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of homogeneous coarse-textured soils and a new solution for prediction of the effective unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of layered coarse-textured soils. The solution was evaluated with both experimental data and numerical simulations. Comparison with experimental data and numerical results for hypothetically layered soil profiles demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach for coarse-textured soils.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1238-1248
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Hydrology
Volume519
Issue numberPA
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 7 2014

Keywords

  • Effective hydraulic properties
  • Heterogeneity
  • Steady-state evaporation
  • Unsaturated hydraulic conductivity
  • Upscaling

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Water Science and Technology

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