APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR ESTABLISHING SOIL WATER CHARACTERISTIC CURVE AND DETERMINING HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY OF SOILS

摘要

The present invention discloses a method of establishing the soil water charactersitc curve (SWCC) and determining unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of fine-grained soils by ultra centrifugation and electrical measurements. An unsaturated state of the commercially available Kaolin (which is a non-swelling soil) is developed by centrifuging it for prolonged periods, and to establish the SWCC. Further, unsaturated hydraulic conductivity (ku) of the Kaolin was determined by employing various PTFs available in the SoilVision database. The utility of electrical measurements for determining soil moisture content has distinct advantage of being non-destructive and non-invasive. It is observed that the ku obtained from these relationships match extremely well for 3000 kPa.