A Soil Hydraulic Conductivity Equation Incorporating Adsorption and Capillarity

Abstract

A soil’s hydraulic conductivity is a highly nonlinear function of water content, decreasing many orders of magnitude from its saturated state to dry state. This nonlinearity is a macroscopic manifestation of microscopic soil properties of pore structure, pore connectivity, and mineral–water interaction. These microscopic soil properties are underpinned by two distinct soil–water interaction mechanisms: adsorption and capillarity. Herein, a soil hydraulic conductivity equation was developed by incorporating capillary pore flow and adsorptive film flow. The capillary pore flow is captured via a model of bundle of cylindrical capillaries, whereas the adsorptive film flow is established using a film thickness function incorporating adsorption mechanisms of the electric double layer, van der Waals, surface hydration, and cation hydration potentials. The transition between adsorptive film flow and capillary flow is delineated by a water cavitation probability function. The proposed soil hydraulic conductivity equation automatically can fulfill the five necessary physical constraints imposed by underlying soil–water interaction characteristics. The proposed hydraulic conductivity equation can capture the hydraulic conductivity data very well for a wide array of soils, and outperforms several established soil hydraulic models in full matric potential ranges, especially in the low matric potential range in which adsorptive film flow is dominant.