A Relationship between Hydraulic Conductivity and Electrical Properties of Silty Sand on the Riverside of the Nakdong River

Abstract

Hydraulic conductivity is an important parameter, representing permeable property of the groundwater in aquifers, in the issues of groundwater development, groundwater contamination, and groundwater flow, etc. We estimated a relationship between hydraulic conductivity and electrical properties (formation factor, chargeability, and time constant) of silty sand in the laboratory. For this study, we conducted grain size analysis, constant head permeameter test, and measured electrical resistivity and spectral induced polarization of silty sand samples collected from the riverside alluvium of the Nakdong River in Nogok-ri area, Dasan-myeon, Goryeong-gun in Gyeongbook Province, Korea. In the laboratory test, we used soil samples of approximately uniform porosity with 0.5% error range, and kept the electrical resistivity of pore water with 100 ohm-m. As a result, the relationship between effective particle size and hydraulic conductivity agrees fairly well with the existing empirical formulas. Hydraulic conductivity was correlated with formation factor, chargeability, and time constant: hydraulic conductivity increased with increasing formation factor and time constant as well as with decreasing chargeability.