Rd. Zhang, Estimating soil hydraulic conductivity and macroscopic capillary length from the disk infiltrometer, SOIL SCI SO, 62(6), 1998, pp. 1513-1521
The disk infiltrometer is increasingly used to measure in situ soil hydraul
ic properties in the field. Several procedures have been proposed for deter
mining soil hydraulic conductivity from disk infiltrometer data. However, t
he procedures require steady-state infiltration rates at several tensions,
which limits their applications in the field. In this study, two methods we
re developed to estimate soil hydraulic conductivity and macroscopic capill
ary length using soil water fluxes at any infiltration time under the disk
infiltrometer. The proposed procedures do not require steady-state infiltra
tion rates but infiltration data at any time. Therefore, the time required
for field infiltrometer experiments can be dramatically reduced. Meanwhile
the new procedures provide high estimation accuracy of soil hydraulic condu
ctivity and macroscopic capillary length. Extensive numerically simulated d
ata were used to examine the methods for various soils and different radii
and tensions of the disk infiltrometer. The proposed methods are especially
useful for estimating soil hydraulic conductivity and macroscopic capillar
y length of fine-textured soils, using infiltration data collected during a
short experiment period with a relatively large infiltrometer.