Hydraulic conductivity and sorption coefficients for chlorinated hydrocarbons (chloroform, carbon tetrachloride and tetrachloroethylene) were evaluated for 216 sediment samples collected across a 15 m transect and a 21 m depth interval in a contaminated aquifer near Schoolcraft, Michigan. Relationships between hydraulic conductivity, linear sorption partition coefficients, grain size classes, a...

Vaccinium myrtillus and Vaccinium vitis-idaea are two dwarf shrubs widespread in the European Alps. We studied the hydraulics of these species hypothesizing that (1) the hydraulic architecture of dwarf shrubs differs from trees, (2) hydraulic properties reflect the species' ecological amplitude and (3) hydraulic properties vary spatially and seasonally. Key hydraulic parameters (osmotic potenti...

Process-based agricultural system models require detailed description of soil hydraulic properties that are usually not available. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the sensitivity of model simulation results to variability in measured soil hydraulic properties and to compare simulation results using measured and default soil parameters. To do so, we measured soil water retention cu...

The unsaturated soil hydraulic properties are often described using Mualem–van Genuchten (MVG) type analytical functions. Recent studies suggest several shortcomings of these functions near saturation, notably the lack of second-order continuity of the soil water retention function at saturation and the inability of the hydraulic conductivity function to account for macroporosity. We present a ...

A hydraulic jump is a sudden, rapid transition from a supercritical flow to a subcritical flow. At large inflow Froude numbers, the jump is characterized by a significant amount of entrained air. For this paper, the bubbly two-phase flow properties of steady and strong hydraulic jumps were investigated experimentally. The results demonstrate that the strong air entrainment rate and the depth-av...

Abstract: Horticultural substrates, also referred to as growing media, potting soils and gardening or soilless substrates, are widely used as a basis for vegetable and flower production in horticulture. They are created as a composition of different ingredients (bog peat, organic residuals, coir, perlite and other components). Hydraulic properties such as water storage capacity, air capacity, s...

The unsaturated soil hydraulic properties (the soil water characteristic and relative permeability curves) are key hydrodynamic parameters in the fields of soil science and civil engineering. Because of the strong dependency of these properties on water content, their determination is subject to considerable experimental and numerical problems. Difficulties increase when the soil approaches ove...

Non-destructive methods for testing material properties allow for multiple tests to be performed on the same sample, which will speed up the design and testing process for hydrogel contact lenses. The mechanical properties of contact lenses were investigated by microindentation testing. Indenter force responses were recorded for two modes of testing: constant velocity and relaxation indentation...

Novel evaporation experiment to determine soil hydraulic properties K. Schneider, O. Ippisch, and K. Roth Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany Received: 24 April 2006 – Accepted: 27 April 2006 – Published: 29 June 2006 Correspondence to: K. Schneider (kla...