Combined Effect of Heterogeneity, Anisotropy and Saturation on Steady State Flow and Transport: a Laboratory Sand Tank Experiment

Field soils show rather different spreading behavior at different water saturations, frequently caused by layering of the soil material. We performed tracer experiments in a laboratory sand tank. Such experiments complement and help comprehension of field investigations. We estimated, by image analysis, the first two moments of small plumes traveling through a two-dimensional, heterogeneous medium with strongly anisotropic correlation structure. Three steady state regimes were analyzed. Two main conclusions were drawn. First, low saturation led to very large heterogeneity and to strong preferential flow. Thus the description of the flow paths and the prediction of the solute arrival times require, in this case, more accurate knowledge about the topological structure. Second, saturation-dependent macroscopic anisotropy is an essential element of transport in unsaturated media. For this reason, small structural soil features should be properly upscaled to give appropriate effective soil parameters to be input in transport models

The Preferential Flow Syndrom \u2013 A Buzzword or a Scientific Problem

The export of surface-applied compounds or of elements residing in the solution of the soil matrix to surface and groundwater is, in most cases, a problem with a spatial scale in the order of hectares or more. Preferential flow, on the other hand, is often analyzed on scales of small field plots, soil monoliths or smaller. Reactive compounds are partly bypassing the retention compartment of the soil matrix through sub-scale pathways that are undetectable with currently used sampling techniques. The purpose of this is to bridge the scale of preferential flow processes with that of the preferential flow effects. Ultimately, this is a problem of the detection devices used for capturing the decisive soil factors and their implementation into up-scaled models

Upscaling of anisotropy in unsaturated Miller-similar porous media

Geological and pedological processes rarely form isotropic media as is usually assumed in transport studies. Anisotropy at the Darcy or field scale may be detected directly by measuring flow parameters or may become indirectly evident from movement and shape of solute plumes. Anisotropic behavior of a soil at one scale may, in many cases, be related to the presence of lower-scale directional structures. Miller similitude with different pore-scale geometries of the basic element is used to model macroscopic flow and transport behavior. Analytical expressions for the anisotropic conductivity tensor are derived based on the dynamic law that governs the flow problem at the pore scale. The effects of anisotropy on transport parameters are estimated by numerical modeling

Hydraulic contacts controlling water flow across porous grains

Water flow between porous grains varies widely depending on the water distribution in contacts between grains. The hydraulic behavior of contacts varies from highly conductive when water fills the contacts to a bottleneck to flow as water pressure drops and contact asperities rapidly drain. Such changes greatly impact the hydraulic conductivity of porous grain packs such as aggregated soil. The dominant driving force of water flow across contacts is capillarity, often quantified relative to gravity and viscous forces using the capillary and Bond numbers. For fast water infiltration, viscous forces dominate. For simplicity we modeled the water distribution between spherical porous grains whose surfaces are covered by spherical bumps of much smaller radii. We provide experimental evidence obtained by neutron radiography and synchrotron-based x-ray tomographic microscopy documenting transitions in the flow behavior across contacts