Conversion Factor Development for Comparative Infiltration Analysis of Downscaled Double-Ring Infiltrometer
摘要
Soil infiltration is the process in which water travels through soil and the velocity with which it enters is termed infiltration rate. To calculate soil infiltration rate various instruments are used. Double-Ring Infiltrometer (DRI) is one of the most often in situ instruments used to estimate soil infiltration properties, which are important for the hydraulic characterisation of ground. However, the limitation is due to the larger size of the standard DRI apparatus and its strenuous process in the field. Downscaling the conventional DRI is the need of the hour to enhance the ease of experimentation without losing the precision in soil infiltration analysis. There were differences in results when DRIs of varied sizes were used. As per ASTM D 3385-09, the infiltration measurements were taken by using inner and outer rings of DRI of size 30 and 60 cm. So these measurements were then scaled down to 30 and 20 cm. Significant differences were observed when the conventional and scaled DRI results were compared. To solve this imbalance, this study aimed to create a conversion factor to bridge these gaps and maintain uniformity between conventional and scaled DRIs. For analysis, several experiments have been done by using different DRI sizes on the same type of soil. Statistical analysis has been done to enumerate the differences detected between the two sets of observations. The collected data helps in the development of a conversion factor that normalised the infiltration rates derived from the scaled DRI to those of the conventional size.