The recent similarity hypotheses to describe water infiltration into homogeneous soils

ABSTRACT A similarity hypothesis recently presented to describe horizontal infiltration into homogeneous soils, developed for coarse-textured soils like sieved marine sand, implies that the soil water retention function θ(h) is the mirror image of an extended Boltzmann transform function θ(λ2). A second hypothesis applicable to vertical infiltration suggests that the soil water retention function θ(h) is also the mirror image of the soil water profile θ(z). Using previously published infiltration data, we investigated whether these two similarity solutions successfully describe infiltration into two “normal” soils. Although the theory using the first similarity assumption adequately describes horizontal cumulative infiltration and infiltration rate into both soils, it fails to estimate soil water distributions measured between soil profiles. The second similarity solution for vertical infiltration into either soil completely fails to coincide with measured soil water distributions, cumulative infiltration and infiltration rate.

摘要 近期提出了一项用于描述均质土壤（homogeneous soils）水平入渗（horizontal infiltration）过程的相似性假说，该假说针对筛分海砂（sieved marine sand）等粗质地土壤（coarse-textured soils）开发，其核心论断为：土壤持水特征曲线θ(h)（soil water retention function θ(h)）是扩展玻尔兹曼变换函数θ(λ²)（extended Boltzmann transform function θ(λ²)）的镜像。第二项适用于垂直入渗（vertical infiltration）的相似性假说则提出，土壤持水特征曲线θ(h)同时也是土壤水分剖面θ(z)（soil water profile θ(z)）的镜像。本研究依托已发表的入渗数据，探究这两项相似性解法能否有效描述两种“常规”土壤的入渗过程。尽管基于第一项相似性假设的理论可较为准确地描述两种土壤的水平累积入渗量（cumulative infiltration）与入渗速率（infiltration rate），但无法精准估算实测得到的土壤剖面间的水分分布（soil water distributions）。针对任意一种土壤的垂直入渗，第二项相似性解法完全无法与实测得到的土壤水分分布、累积入渗量及入渗速率相吻合。