0000000000312814
AUTHOR
Majdi Abou Najm
showing 2 related works from this author
Estimating the macroscopic capillary length from Beerkan infiltration experiments and its impact on saturated soil hydraulic conductivity predictions
2020
International audience; The macroscopic capillary length, λc, is a fundamental soil parameter expressing the relative importance of the capillary over gravity forces during water movement in unsaturated soil. In this investigation, we propose a simple field method for estimating λc using only a single-ring infiltration experiment of the Beerkan type and measurements of initial and saturated soil water contents. We assumed that the intercept of the linear regression fitted to the steady-state portion of the experimental infiltration curve could be used as a reliable predictor of λc. This hypothesis was validated by assessing the proposed calculation approach using both analytical and field d…
An open-source instrumentation package for intensive soil hydraulic characterization
2020
International audience; We present a new open-source and modular instrumentation package composed of up to ten automatic in- filtrometers connected to data acquisition systems for automatic recording of multiple infiltration experiments. The infiltrometers are equipped with differential transducers to monitor water level changes in a Mariotte re- servoir, and, in turn, to quantify water infiltration rates. The data acquisition systems consist of low-cost components and operate on the open-source microcontroller platform Arduino. The devices were tested both in the laboratory and on different urban and agricultural soils in France and India. More specifically, we tested three procedures to t…