Predicting the saturated hydraulic conductivity of soils: a review

Abstract

This paper examines and assesses predictive methods for the saturated hydraulic conductivity of soils. The soil definition is that of engineering. It is not that of soil science and agriculture, which corresponds to ''top soil'' in engineering. Most predictive methods were calibrated using laboratory permeability tests performed on either disturbed or intact specimens for which the test conditions were either measured or supposed to be known. The quality of predictive equations depends highly on the test quality. Without examining all the quality issues, the paper explains the 14 most important mistakes for tests in rigid-wall or flexible-wall permeameters. Then, it briefly presents 45 predictive methods, and in detail, those with some potential, such as the Kozeny-Carman equation. Afterwards, the data of hundreds of excellent quality tests, with none of the 14 mistakes, are used to assess the predictive methods with a potential. The relative performance of those methods is evaluated and presented in graphs. Three methods are found to work fairly well for non-plastic soils, two for plastic soils without fissures, and one for compacted plastic soils used for liners and covers. The paper discusses the effects of temperature and intrinsic anisotropy within the specimen, but not larger scale anisotropy within aquifers and aquitards.

Coupling distributed stormwater collection and managed aquifer recharge: Field application and implications

“…We processed sediment samples to determine their grain size distributions (see SI) and used two-sample KolmogoroveSmirnov (KeS) tests to compare grain size between sample pairs (Massey, 1951). We used the KozenyeCarman equation (Chapuis, 2012) to calculate saturated vertical hydraulic conductivity (K [L/T]) based on the grain size distribution of individual samples:…”

Constriction size distributions of granular filters: a numerical study

“…The same basis has also been used to justify the use of characteristic diameters in other areas of engineering, for example the internal stability of soils (e.g. Kézdi, 1979), permeability (Chapuis, 2012) and leachate collection systems (Yu & Rowe, 2012). defined the 'controlling constriction size', D* c , of a granular filter as the diameter of the smallest constriction which a base particle is likely to encounter on a given flow path.…”

Comparison of Saturated Hydraulic Conductivity Estimated by Three Different Methods

“…It is necessary to obtain appropriate hydraulic parameters such as saturated hydraulic conductivity (K s ) to simulate groundwater flow and solute transport in both saturated and unsaturated conditions, as well as to analyze the soil water dynamics of vertical and lateral drainage flow [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. The soil K s can generally be measured through field and laboratory experiments (e.g., pumping and permeameter tests) [12].…”