Transport of dissolved material on impermeable surface under artificial rainfall analyzed with the application of face-centered experimental design

ABSTRACT The study of surface runoff and transport of pollutants is of major importance, as it helps preventing environmental impacts, and supports planning tasks carried out by public authorities. The goal of this research was to study the dynamics of the transport of material (NaCl) on an impermeable surface, dissolved by the application of water through a rainfall simulator, having as its source of variation three independent variables: slope, rainfall intensity and position of the material. Face-centered experimental design was used, which contemplated different scenarios reproduced in the experiments, where the influence of the three independent variables on the dependent variables (transport time, peak value, peak time and total mass transported) was evaluated, whose responses were monitored at the outlet of the experimental model. The analysis of the results allowed to identify the significant effect of the slope and position of the material on all the dependent variables studied, as well as the quadratic effect of the slope for the transportation time and total mass transported. As for the rainfall intensity, only influence was observed for transportation time, within the study intervals with a level of significance of 95%. The resulting model is capable of explaining: 90% for transport time, 67.9% for peak value, 74.2% for peak time and 62.4% total mass transported.