Many countries intend to use compacted bentonite as a barrier in their deep geological repositories for nuclear waste. In order to describe and predict hydraulic conductivity or radionuclide transport through the bentonite barrier, fundamental understanding of the microstructure of compacted bentonite is needed. This study examined the interlayer swelling and overall microstructure of Wyoming B...

Pulsed field gradient (PFG) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has been used to study self-diffusion characteristics of water and oil in natural peanuts and in peanuts saturated with water. From the dependence on diffusion time of the echo decay due to diffusion, regions of completely restricted diffusion for the oil molecules were identified. The mean size and size distribution function of these...

This paper presents the laboratory test results of vertical infiltration on two soil columns of finer over coarser soils subject to simulated rainfalls under conditions of no-ponding at the surface and constant head at the bottom. The main objectives were to evaluate the effect of rainfall intensity and duration; and to provide experimental evidence for soil water redistribution and hysteresis....

For the kind of coverings codes called multiple coverings of the farthestoff points (MCF) we define μ-density as a characteristic of quality. A concept of multiple saturating sets ((ρ, μ)-saturating sets) in projective spaces PG(N, q) is introduced. A fundamental relationship of these sets with MCF codes is showed. Lower and upper bounds for the smallest possible cardinality of (1, μ)-saturatin...

Although the spatial variability of water content is expected to be significant in heterogeneous, unsaturated media, its effect on solute transport has been neglected in most stochastic analyses. In this work we develop, evaluate, and numerically verify an analytical model describing the statistical moments of water content, soil water flux, soil water velocity, and solute spreading in the unsa...

An open question for solid-earth scientists is the amount of water in Earth's interior. The uppermost mantle and lower mantle contain little water because their dominant minerals, olivine and bridgmanite, have limited water storage capacity. In contrast, the mantle transition zone (MTZ) at a depth of 410 to 660 km is considered to be a potential water reservoir because its dominant minerals, wa...

As part of a larger, collaborative study, we conducted field experiments to investigate how rainfall signals propagate through an unsaturated soil profile, leading to a rapid pore pressure response and slope instability. We sprinkler-irrigated an entire, unchanneled headwater basin in the steep, humid Oregon Coast Range, and we drove the system to quasi steady state as indicated by tensiometers...