Wednesday, 9 November 2005 - 2:30 PM
266-5

The Hydraulic Conductivity Function: a Function of What?.

Pieter H. Groenevelt, University of Guelph, Dept. of Land Resource Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G2W1, Cameron, D. Grant, University of Adelaide, Prescot Building, Waite Campus, Adelaide, Australia, and Neville Robinson, Flinders University, Dept. of Hydrology, Adelaide, Australia.

An overview will be presented of the several and various proposals and procedures to derive the hydraulic conductivty function from hydrostatic data, starting with the ideas of Burdine(1953), via those of Mualem(1976), Van Genuchten(1980), Fredlund et al.(1994), and Brutsaert(2000) to whatever pops up in the literature during the summer of 2005. The fundamentals of the transfer of hydrostatic parameters into the domain of hydrodynamics will be explored. The mainstream of thought is focused on the integration of the hydrostatic function where the volumetric water content is given as a function of the matric head, h. Results of the integration of the Groenevelt-Grant(2004) model will be presented. The physical link between the scalar extensive variable, the volumetric water content, and the hydraulic conductivity will be explored, as well as the way the tensorial character of the planar water content determines the tensorial character of the hydraulic conductivity.

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