A Closed‐form Equation for Predicting the Hydraulic Conductivity of Unsaturated Soils
1980/09/01 by M. Th. van Genuchten, Martinus Th. van Genuchten · 110 citations
Energy · Engineering · Environmental Science · #Geothermal Energy Systems and Applications #Groundwater flow and contamination studies #Soil and Unsaturated Flow
paper · doi:10.2136/sssaj1980.03615995004400050002x
openalex publication_date 1980/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Abstract
Abstract A new and relatively simple equation for the soil‐water content‐pressure head curve, θ( h ), is described in this paper. The particular form of the equation enables one to derive closed‐form analytical expressions for the relative hydraulic conductivity, K r , when substituted in the predictive conductivity models of N.T. Burdine or Y. Mualem. The resulting expressions for K r ( h ) contain three independent parameters which may be obtained by fitting the proposed soil‐water retention model to experimental data. Results obtained with the closed‐form analytical expressions based on the Mualem theory are compared with observed hydraulic conductivity data for five soils with a wide range of hydraulic properties. The unsaturated hydraulic conductivity is predicted well in four out of five cases. It is found that a reasonable description of the soil‐water retention curve at low water contents is important for an accurated prediction of the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity.
Cited by
- Climate change impacts on supra-permafrost soil and aquifer hydrology: broader, deeper, and longer activity
- ClimaLand: A Land Surface Model Designed to Enable Data‐Driven Parameterizations
- Quantification of Post-Rainfall Moisture Content in Pavement Unbound Layers Using Long-Term Pavement Performance Data
- Learning Soil Physics from Partial Knowledge and Data: Partitioning Capillary and Adsorbed Soil Water
- Bayesian Nonlinear PDE Inference via Gaussian Process Collocation with Application to the Richards Equation
- Experimental and simulation study of resin infiltration in carbon fiber rovings
- A finite element method using a bounded auxiliary variable for solving the Richards equation
- Shallow rooted understory plants use hydraulically redistributed water by mature oak trees during drought
- Overcoming yield gaps in organic and biodynamic viticulture: insights from an 18-year field trial
- Apple Rootstock Response to Threshold Water Management during 6 Weeks of Progressing Drought
- A new Timestep Criterion for the Simulation of Immiscible Two-Phase Flow with IMPES Solvers
- Impact of biochar, compost, and sludge amendments on the soil water balance of a sandy soil
- Groundwater recharge in Brandenburg is declining – but why?
- Quantifying short-term changes in snow strength due to increasing liquid water content above hydraulic barriers
- Evapotranspiration changes with irrigation using saline groundwater and RO concentrate
- Analytical expressions of variable specific yield for layered soils in shallow water table environments
- Segmental retention models for representing the hydraulic properties of evolving structured soils
- CPlantBox: a fully coupled modelling platform for the water and carbon fluxes in the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum
- Contrasting effects of rice husk and palm silk biochars on water infiltration and leakage in a phosphorus-enriched sandy-loam vegetable soil
- A deep learning-based method for deep soil salinity prediction: considering the driving mechanisms of salinity profiles
- How Does Assimilating SMAP Soil Moisture Improve Characterization of the Terrestrial Water Cycle in an Integrated Land Surface‐Subsurface Model?
- Change in Soil Macroporosity With Land Use and Its Effect on Soil Respiration
- HydroShoot: a functional-structural plant model for simulating hydraulic structure, gas and energy exchange dynamics of complex plant canopies under water deficit—application to grapevine ( Vitis vinifera )
- Soil and vegetation responses to biochar application in terms of its feedback on carbon sequestration under different environmental conditions—LiDELS model overview
- Modeling of relative permeabilities including dynamic wettability transition zones
- Mind the Data Gap: Using a Multi‐Measurement Synthesis for Identifying the Challenges and Opportunities in Studying Plant Drought Response and Recovery
- Chemical and physical properties of an anthropogenic dark earth soil from Bragança, Para, Eastern Amazon
- Coupled Time-lapse Full Waveform Inversion for Subsurface Flow Problems using Intrusive Automatic Differentiation
- Fitting the van Genuchten model to the measured hydraulic parameters in soils of different genesis and texture at the regional scale
- Soil moisture map construction using microwave remote sensors and sequential data assimilation
- Spatial and Temporal Variations in Arable Soil Structure and Hydrology Affect the Functioning of Nature‐Based Solutions for Flood Mitigation
- Physical-hydric properties of Oxisols as influenced by soil structure and clay mineralogy
- Implicit-Explicit Scheme with Multiscale Vanka Two-Grid Solver for Heterogeneous Unsaturated Poroelasticity
- A Simple Hydromechanical Modeling of Carbon Sequestration in Sedimentary Rocks
- Impacts of varied irrigation on field water budegts and crop yields in the North China Plain: Rainfed vs. irrigated double cropping system
- Robust, fast, and adaptive splitting schemes for nonlinear doubly-degenerate diffusion equations
- Complexity Analysis of Unsaturated Flow in Heterogeneous Media Using a Complex Network Approach
- A general Beerkan Estimation of Soil Transfer parameters method predicting hydraulic parameters of any unimodal water retention and hydraulic conductivity curves: Application to the Kosugi soil hydraulic model without using particle size distribution data
- Physics-informed neural networks for modeling two-phase steady state flow with capillary heterogeneity at varying flow conditions
- ANOVA-based transformed probabilistic collocation method for Bayesian data-worth analysis
- Data-driven ANN model for estimating unfrozen water content in the thermo-hydraulic simulation of frozen soils
- Resolved CFD-DEM for high-fidelity multiphase flow modeling in porous media of arbitrary geometry
- Adaptive modelling of variably saturated seepage problems
- Modeling Multiphase Flow Through and Around Multiscale Deformable Porous Materials
- Global critical soil moisture thresholds of plant water stress
- Application of Suction Monitoring for Cyclic Triaxial Testing of Compacted Soils
- Modification and discussion of the Green-Ampt model for an evolving wetting profile
- Capillary transport in low saturated sands: superfast non-linear diffusion model versus direct experimental observations
- Measurement of soil water content and electrical conductivity by time domain reflectometry: a review
- A reactive transport modeling approach to simulate biogeochemical processes in pore structures with pore-scale heterogeneities
- Microscopic theory of capillary pressure hysteresis based on pore-space accessivity and radius-resolved saturation
- Heat and Moisture Transport in Unsaturated Porous Media -- A Coupled Model in Terms of Chemical Potential
- Existence and properties of solutions of extended play-type hysteresis model
- Predicting Soil Moisture Characteristic Curves from Continuous Particle-Size Distribution Data
- Soil water dynamics and water balance on a tropical coral island
- Estimation of the van Genuchten Soil Water Retention Properties from Soil Textural Data
- Can ChatGPT Implement Finite Element Models for Geotechnical Engineering Applications?
- Data-Informed Mathematical Characterization of Absorption Properties in Artificial and Natural Porous Materials
- A localized orthogonal decomposition method for semi-linear elliptic problems
- In-situ soil parametrization from multi-layer moisture data
- Irrigation management for spring maize grown on saline soil based on SWAP model
- Soil physical properties and wheat root growth as affected by no-tillage and conventional tillage systems in a Mediterranean environment of Chile
- A local discontinuous Galerkin gradient discretization method for linear\n and quasilinear elliptic equations
- Comparison of CO2 trapping in highly heterogeneous reservoirs with Brooks-Corey and van Genuchten type capillary pressure curves
- On the prediction of three-phase relative permeabilities using two-phase constitutive relationships
- The Impact of High-Resolution Soil Moisture States on Short-Term Numerical Weather Prediction of Convective Initiation over South Africa
- Modelling and Numerical Simulation of Gas Migration in a Nuclear Waste Repository
- Uncertainties of Water Fluxes in Soil–Vegetation–Atmosphere Transfer Models: Inverting Surface Soil Moisture and Evapotranspiration Retrieved from Remote Sensing
- Estimating Effective Soil Hydraulic Properties Using Spatially Distributed Soil Moisture and Evapotranspiration
- Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical Modeling of a TBM Tunnel in Opalinus Clay: Thermal Coupling Effects on Long-term Lining Pressures and Excavation Damage Zone Development
- Slope Instability of the Earthen Levee in Boston, UK: Numerical Simulation and Sensor Data Analysis
- Boreal Forest Cover Delays Thermokarst Onset in Central Siberia's Yedoma Deposits
- Effect of Irrigation Pattern and Timing on Root Density of Young Citrus Trees Infected with Huanglongbing Disease
- LISFLOOD: a GIS‐based distributed model for river basin scale water balance and flood simulation
- An analytical approach to ascertain saturation‐excess versus infiltration‐excess overland flow in urban and reference landscapes
- Agrophysics: Physics Applied to Agriculture
- Comparison of nonlinear solvers within continuation method for steady-state variably saturated groundwater flow modeling
- Desiccation behaviour of colloidal silica grouted sand: A new material for the creation of near surface hydraulic barriers
- Fundamentals of Small Catchment Hydrology
- Natural and synthetic hydrogels as an amendment to overcome Radiata pine drought stress at the time of planting
- Estimating Saturated Hydraulic Conductivity from Surface Ground-Penetrating Radar Monitoring of Infiltration
- Continuous-time random-walk model of transport in variably saturated heterogeneous porous media
- EFFECT OF ORGANIC CARBON ON AVAILABLE WATER IN SOIL
- Estimation of field capacity and moisture retention based on regression analysis involving chemical and physical properties in Alfisols and Ultisols of the state of Rio de Janeiro
- Precipitation-optimised targeting of nitrogen fertilisers in a model maize cropping system
- Influence of biochar addition to clayey sand on desiccation cracks formation and water infiltration under wetting and drying
- Saturated–unsaturated flow in a compressible leaky-unconfined aquifer
- Biochar application enhances soil quality by improving soil physical structure under particular water and salt conditions in arid region of Northwest China
- Self-Pumping Transpiration Cooling: A Joint Experimental and Numerical Study
- Simulating and monitoring water flow, salinity distribution and yield production under buried diffuser irrigation for date palm tree in Saharan Jemna oasis (North Africa)
- Nonlocal Interface Dynamics and Pattern Formation in Gravity-Driven Unsaturated Flow through Porous Media
- A method for computing infiltration and redistribution in a discretized moisture content domain
- Flood Effect on Groundwater Recharge on a Typical Silt Loam Soil
- A new general 1‐D vadose zone flow solution method
- Soil water retention and carbon pools in tropical forested wetlands and marshes of the Gulf of Mexico
- HydroStartML: A combined machine learning and physics-based approach to reduce hydrological model spin-up time
- Investigating the effect of porosity on the soil water retention curve using the multiphase Lattice Boltzmann Method
- Diagnosis of model-structural errors with a sliding time-window Bayesian analysis
- Machine Learning Accelerates Parameter Optimization and Uncertainty Assessment of a Land Surface Model
- Simulation of coupled heat and mass transport with reaction in PEM fuel cell cathode using lattice Boltzmann method
- Unsaturated hydraulic conductivity in dual-porosity soils: Percolation theory
- Improving the soil water module of the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer cropping system model for subsurface irrigation
- Parameterization of soil freezing characteristic curve for unsaturated soils
- Transpiration‐ and precipitation‐induced subsurface water flow observed using the self‐potential method
- The Behavior of Dense, Nonaqueous Phase Liquids in Fractured Clay and Rock
- Numerical Simulation of Air Sparging for Remediation of NAPL Contamination
- On the Relation Between Saturated Conductivity and Capillary Retention Characteristics
- Runoff-initiated post-fire debris flow Western Cascades, Oregon
- Derivation of Soil‐Specific Streaming Potential Electrical Parameters from Hydrodynamic Characteristics of Partially Saturated Soils
- The material point method for unsaturated soils
Related