Modeling Soil Hydraulic Properties Evolution during Consolidation Process Under Saturated Condition.

Knowledge of soil hydraulics properties such as water retention characteristic and hydraulic conductivity curves are essential for water flow and solute transport modeling in the vadose zone. These properties are often established assuming a soil is non-deformable (rigid) which doesn’t change over time. However, under real conditions such as intense agricultural systems, the soil is summit to external stress caused by agricultural machinery traffic and flooding leading to changes in volumetric strain and consequently, soil hydraulic properties alteration. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to propose a numerical model to predict soil hydraulic properties evolution during consolidation process under saturated condition. The experimental setup used for this study was a sandy soil cylinder, which was characterized within the CT-scan method during consolidation process, in order to describe temporal and spatial variation of soil hydraulic parameters. A poro-elasticity model was implemented in in FEM software to simulate the effects of consolidation processes on soil hydraulic properties. The results showed a good prediction of soil hydraulic properties evolutions within the proposed model. The development of the method to predict the soil hydraulic properties evolution during consolidation process give a more realistic description of water flow and solute transport of the soil system under the anthropic pressure.