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Concept
Hydraulic conductivity
Summary
In science and engineering, hydraulic conductivity (K, in SI units of meters per second), is a property of porous materials, soils and rocks, that describes the ease with which a fluid (usually water) can move through the pore space, or fractures network. It depends on the intrinsic permeability (k, unit: m^2) of the material, the degree of saturation, and on the density and viscosity of the fluid. Saturated hydraulic conductivity, Ksat, describes water movement through saturated media.
By definition, hydraulic conductivity is the ratio of volume flux to hydraulic gradient yielding a quantitative measure of a saturated soil's ability to transmit water when subjected to a hydraulic gradient.
There are two broad categories of determining hydraulic conductivity:
Empirical approach by which the hydraulic conductivity is correlated to soil properties like pore size and particle size (grain size) distributions, and soil texture
Experimental approach by which the hydraulic conductivity is determined from hydraulic experiments using Darcy's law
The experimental approach is broadly classified into:
Laboratory tests using soil samples subjected to hydraulic experiments
Field tests (on site, in situ) that are differentiated into:
small scale field tests, using observations of the water level in cavities in the soil
large scale field tests, like pump tests in wells or by observing the functioning of existing horizontal drainage systems.
The small scale field tests are further subdivided into:
infiltration tests in cavities above the water table
slug tests in cavities below the water table
The methods of determination of hydraulic conductivity and other related issues are investigated by several researchers and include more empirical approaches.
Allen Hazen derived an empirical formula for approximating hydraulic conductivity from grain size analyses:
where
Hazen's empirical coefficient, which takes a value between 0.0 and 1.5 (depending on literatures), with an average value of 1.0. A.F. Salarashayeri & M.
Official source
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