Effects of flow rate on soil infiltrability measurement with the automatic system
Sun Bei, Mao Lili, Zhao Jun, Lei Tingwu
1. College of Water Resources & Civil Engineering, China Agricultural University, 100083, Beijing;2. State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation,Chinese Academy of Science and Ministry of Water Resources, 712100, Yangling, Shaanxi: China
Abstract：Soil infiltrability is of great importance for such researches and applications as hydrological processes and agriculture and forestry industries and etc. In the laboratory experiments the automatic soil infiltrability measurement system was applied to study the effect of the flow rate on the measured soil infiltrability so as to test measurement method and the instrument system and their responses to flow rates.The experiments involved three inflow rates (0.75, 1.02, and 1.92 L/ h) with 3 replicates. The measurement system, as controlled by a computer, automatically recorded the advancing processes (increase) of the wetted soil surface area, and then it was used to estimate the soil infiltrabilities with the numerical method and the average approximation methods. The results indicated that the system is convenient to use and the computational procedures are simple. There were no significant differences among the measured infiltration processes. The infiltrability processes measured under different flow rates equally represent the whole infiltration processes of the soil. This study supplies a reference for the range of used flow rates for infiltrability measurement. The system is demonstrated to be useful for further understanding of the soil infiltration process.
2013, Vol. 11 
