Related papers: Rain water transport and storage in a model sandy …

We visualize the formation of fingered flow in dry model sandy soils under different raining conditions using a quasi-2d experimental set-up, and systematically determine the impact of soil grain diameter and surface wetting property on…

To probe the effects of hydrogel particle additives on the water-accessible pore structure of sandy soils, we introduce a custom pressure plate method in which the volume of water expelled from a wet granular packing is measured as a…

Water retention is one of the key soil characteristics. Available models of soil water retention relate to the curve-fitting type. The objective of this work is to suggest a physical model of water retention (drying branch) for soils with a…

A particle-water discrete element based approach to describe water movement in partially saturated granular media is presented and tested. Water potential is governed by both capillary bridges, dominant at low saturations, and the pressure…

We experimentally examined the amount of water retention in a model soil composed of aggregated glass beads. The model soil was characterized by two size parameters: size of aggregates $D$ and size of monomer particles (composing…

Root systems can influence the dynamics of evapotranspiration of water out of a porous medium. The coupling of evapotranspiration remains a key aspect affecting overall root behavior. Predicting the evapotranspiration curve in the presence…

We investigate erosion patterns observed in a horizontal granular bed resulting from seepage of water motivated by observation of beach rills and channel growth in larger scale landforms. Our experimental apparatus consists of a wide…

The heterogeneous distribution of water-repellent materials at the soil surface causes a phenomenon known as fractional wettability. This condition frequently triggers destabilization of the wetting front during water infiltration,…

Control of the swelling, chemical functionalization, and adhesivity of hydrogels are finding new applications in a wide range of material systems. We investigate experimentally the effect of adsorbed particles on hydrogels on the depinning…

Water evaporation is critically important for hydrogels in open-air applications, but theoretically modeling is difficult due to the complicated intermolecular interactions and sustained deformation. In this work, we construct a simplified…

In this article, we investigate the nanoscale soil-water retention mechanism of unsaturated clay through molecular dynamics and machine learning. Pyrophyllite was chosen due to its stable structure and as the precursor of other 2:1 clay…

Inversion methodology has been used to obtain, from multi-layer soil probes records, a complete soil parametrisation, namely water retention curve, unsaturated conductivity curve and bulk density at 4 depths. The approach integrates water…

The objective of this work is to derive the soil water retention from the soil structure without curve-fitting and only using the physical parameters found irrespective of an experimental retention curve. Two key points underlie the work:…

We present a three-dimensional model, based on cohesive spherical particles, of rain-induced landslides. The rainwater infiltration into the soil follow the either the fractional or the fractal diffusion equations. We solve analytically the…

Moisture-capturing hydrogels have emerged as attractive sorbent materials capable of converting ambient humidity into liquid water. Recent works have demonstrated exceptional water capture capabilities of hydrogels, while simultaneously,…

Several species of plants have raindrop-sized flowers that catch raindrops opportunistically in order to spread their 0.3-mm seeds distances of over 1 m. In the following fluid dynamics video, we show examples of these plants and some of…

A model is presented for the gravity-driven flow of rainwater descending through the soil layer of a green roof, treated as a porous medium on a flat permeable surface representing an efficient drainage layer. A fully saturated zone is…

Soil physics models have long relied on simplifying assumptions to represent complex processes, yet such assumptions can strongly bias model predictions. Here, we propose a paradigm-shifting differentiable hybrid modeling (DHM) framework…

We measure the flow of water through mixed packings of glass spheres and soft swellable hydrogel grains, at constant sample volume. Permeability values are obtained at constant sample volume and at porosities smaller than random close…

Hydrogels hold promise in agriculture as reservoirs of water in dry soil, potentially alleviating the burden of irrigation. However, confinement in soil can markedly reduce the ability of hydrogels to absorb water and swell, limiting their…