Moisture-suction curves and related apparatus

Abstract

There are a growing number of industries such as mining and agriculture in which contamination transport through the unsaturated zone or the zone above the water table is an important consideration. Soil flow in the vadose zone can be included as a subset of multiphase flow which includes air, water, and NAPLs. Under low flow conditions, contaminants may be transported by diffusion. Despite the need for an understanding of contaminant migration in the vadose zone, there is still no standard in place to measure molecular diffusion coefficients such that a relationship between the diffusion coefficients and the moisture contents could be achieved. Before one can build an apparatus to measure these diffusion coefficients, one must establish the moisture-suction relationships for a given material in order to develop models for unsaturated flow; this is the basis of this senior report.