Hydraulic Conductivity

In this chapter, the probabilistic porous network model is employed to establish a fully analytical equation for the relative hydraulic conductivity of soils. From this approach, a parameter accounting for the proportion of pores of different sizes forming continuous paths of saturated elements between the boundaries is used to compute the hydraulic conductivity. This approach avoids the effect of the size of the network on the results and the necessity of the pore-scale model approach required by computational networks to obtain the hydraulic conductivity of soils. Similarly, constraints related to computing time and memory size are avoided. In addition, single, double, or triple structured soil can be considered for the network. The theoretical and experimental comparisons indicate that capillary flow can account for the hydraulic conductivity of soils for the full range of suction of sandy and silty soils. Finally, all parameters required in the relative conductivity equation can be obtained by fitting the numerical with the experimental retention curves.