Infiltration in a double‐porosity medium: Experiments and comparison with a theoretical model

Abstract

[1] This paper presents experimental verification of the mathematical model of unsaturated flow in double-porosity soils developed by the asymptotic homogenization method. A series of one-dimensional infiltration experiments was carried out in a column filled with a double-porosity medium composed of a mixture of sand and sintered clayey spheres arranged in a periodic manner. The unsaturated hydraulic properties of each porous material were obtained from independent infiltration experiments by inverse analysis and some additional tests. They were used to calculate the effective parameters of the double-porosity medium, i.e., the effective hydraulic conductivity and the effective capillary capacity. The numerical solution of the macroscopic boundary value problem, consisting of a highly nonlinear integrodifferential equation, was obtained using the Fortran code DPOR_1D presented by Lewandowska et al. [2004]. The calculated time evolutions of both water infiltrating into and flowing out from the double-porosity medium were compared with the experimental results. A very reasonable qualitative and quantitative agreement between simulations and observations is obtained, showing the capacity of the model to capture the main features of the process.

A review of model applications for structured soils: a) Water flow and tracer transport

“…The resulting inflow and outflow observations were used to verify the DPM approach 'DPOR-1D' (Lewandowska et al, 2004). With domain specific hydraulic parameters (van Genuchten, 1980) identified independently for the sand material and clayey spheres using HYDRUS-1D (Šimůnek et al, 1998), the macroscopic prediction satisfactorily approximated observed inflow and outflow for the composite dual-permeability medium (Lewandowska et al, 2005). A similar procedure for parameterizing a DPM resulted in a satisfactory simulation of water drainage from a repacked soil column with cylindrical PF region .…”

“…Domain specific hydraulic functions. Lewandowska et al (2005) conducted infiltration experiments with a double-porosity medium composed of a mixture of sand and sintered clayey spheres arranged in a periodic manner. The resulting inflow and outflow observations were used to verify the DPM approach 'DPOR-1D' (Lewandowska et al, 2004).…”

Observation of Light Non-Aqueous Phase Liquid Migration in Aggregated Soil Using Image Analysis

“…It is to be noted that there is a marked difference in the medium composition between double-porosity soil and fractured rock although both are essentially a type of double-porosity medium (Bagherieh et al 2009;Warren and Root 1963). Lewandowska et al (2005) presented a series of one-dimensional infiltration experiments in an initially dry double-porosity medium under constant pressure head. Their results were aimed at verifying a theoretical model that they developed.…”

Two‐scale modeling of solute dispersion in unsaturated double‐porosity media: Homogenization and experimental validation

“…This model is associated with the unsaturated water flow model, which was previously developed by applying the homogenization method [24]. The solute transport model was validated through fully controlled NaCl dispersion experiments on a DP physical model of known microstructure, the same which was previously used for the validation of the DP unsaturated water flow model [25][26][27]. The paper is structured as follows.…”