Informatics Publishing Limited

Marcel Bawindsom Kebre ¹, Francois Ouedraogo ¹, Naon Betaboale ¹, Francois Zougmore ¹, Fabien Cherblanc ²

Affiliations
1 LAME, UFR-SEA, Universite Ouagadougou, Avenue Charles de Gaulle 03 BP 7021, BF
2 LMGC, CNRS, Universite Montpellier 2, Place Eugene Bataillon 34000 Montpellier, FR

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate the performance of the most widely used semi-empirical models (van Genuchten (1980), Fayer and Simmons (1995) and Fredlund and Xing (1994)) and, an empirical model, the Modified Kovacs (MK) model for the determination of soil-water characteristic curve at the low water contents of two horizons of a soil from Burkina Faso. Combining terms from capillary state and adsorbed state of soil water gives a physical basis for the Modified Kovacs model. Our study confirms that the use of semi-empirical models requires somewhat large dataset covering the entire range of water content while the empirical model MK requires only basic geotechnical properties of soil and a few experimental points to adjust the parameters m and ac of the model. It appears that the MK model, by its simplicity and lower cost for the acquisition of experimental data, is the most appropriate.

Keywords

Soil, Water, Arid, Modelling, Empirical, Semi-Empirical.

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