HR: 0800h
AN: H11C-0656    [Abstracts]
TI: Eliminating kinetic effects on the pore size distribution as determined from water-retention curves
AU: * hunt, a g
EM: allen.hunt@wright.edu
AF: Department of Physics, Wright State University, 3640 Colonel Glenn Highway, Dayton, OH 45435, United States
AU: skinner, t e
EM: thomas.skinner@wright.edu
AF: Department of Physics, Wright State University, 3640 Colonel Glenn Highway, Dayton, OH 45435, United States
AB: The procedure described requires some knowledge of a critical moisture content for percolation as described by the Moldrup et al. (2001) experimental results for a moisture content at which solute diffusion vanishes. This can be obtained experimentally by using N2 BET measurements or theoretically from the particle size distribution. Alternatively one can estimate the critical moisture content as the residual moisture content on a water retention curve. We use critical path analysis to find the saturation S dependence of the hydraulic conductivity from the pore size distribution inferred from a water-retention curve. As S is reduced towards the critical value we test our calculated K with K obtained by universal percolation scaling. When the latter formulation predicts the more rapid drop of K with decreasing moisture content, we assume that equilibration effects (as described in a previous publication) interfere with the interpretation that the water retention curve reflects only medium properties and renormalize the water retention by kinetic effects. We then use the inverse of this renormalization to extract a "true" pore size distribution.
DE: 1829 Groundwater hydrology
DE: 1869 Stochastic hydrology
DE: 1875 Vadose zone
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting