HR: 0800h
AN: H21C-1360    [Abstracts]
TI: A generalization of Iverson's theory of short-term infiltration
AU: * Cordano, E
EM: ecor@diam.unige.it
AF: Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Genoa, Italy, Via Montallegro 1, Genova, GE 16145 Italy
AU: Bartolini, P
EM: bart@diam.unige.it
AF: Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Genoa, Italy, Via Montallegro 1, Genova, GE 16145 Italy
AU: Rigon, R
EM: riccardo.rigon@ing.unitn.it
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering/CUDAM, University of Trento, Italy, Via Mesiano 77, Trento, TN 38100 Italy
AB: During a rainfall or irrigation event, a pressure wave is said to travel trough unsaturated and eventually create the conditions which lead to instability of hillslopes. Many author studied this phenomenon in field and in laboratory [Torres et al, 1998, Rasmussen et al., 2000, Torres and Alexander,2002]. Iverson [2000] presented a simplification of the theory of infiltration which allows for calculation of such effects under the hypothesis of wet and linear soils. In this paper we show that a more general solution can be found for the same problem using a non linear approximation of infiltration equation (as opposed to Iverson linear approximation) with constant parameters, either for dry or wet soil. In fact, the non linear infiltration theory equation above, is known in literature as the deterministic Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (dKPZ) equation [1986]. The theory allows to determine the celerity of propagation of pressure waves for any depth below the soil surface and for any humidity condition. By comparing the new analytic results with the outcomes of a one-dimensional (1D) numerical model of Richards' equation, implemented by the authors, it is also studied how the constant parameters of the dKPZ equation can be estimated for practical cases. A suitable dimensionless formulation for the Van Genuchten parameters used in the numerical code makes the results valid for any soil type.
DE: 1838 Infiltration
DE: 1866 Soil moisture
DE: 1875 Vadose zone
DE: 3070 Submarine landslides
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005