On Infiltration and Infiltration Characteristic Times

In his seminal paper on the solution of the infiltration equation, Philip (1969), https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-1-4831-9936-8.50010-6 proposed a gravity time, t_grav, to estimate practical convergence time and the time domain validity of his infinite time series expansion, TSE, for describing the transient state. The parameter t_grav refers to a point in time where infiltration is dominated equally by capillarity and gravity as derived from the first two (dominant) terms of the TSE. Evidence suggests that applicability of the truncated two-term equation of Philip has a time limit requiring higher-order TSE terms to better describe the infiltration process for times exceeding that limit. Since the conceptual definition of t_grav is valid regardless of the infiltration model used, we opted to reformulate t_grav using the analytic implicit model proposed by Parlange et al. (1982), https://doi.org/10.1097/00010694-198206000-00001 valid for all times and related TSE. Our derived gravity times ensure a given accuracy of the approximations describing transient states, while also providing insight about the times needed to reach steady state. In addition to the roles of soil sorptivity (S) and the saturated (K_s) and initial (K_i) hydraulic conductivities, we explored the effects of a soil specific shape parameter β, involved in Parlange's model and related to the type of soil, on the behavior of t_grav. We show that the reformulated t_grav (notably (Formula presented.) where F(β) is a β-dependent function) is about three times larger than the classical t_grav given by (Formula presented.). The differences between the classical t_grav,Philip and the reformulated t_grav increase for fine-textured soils, attributed to the time needed to attain steady-state infiltration and thus i + nfiltration for inferring soil hydraulic properties. Results show that the proposed t_grav is a better indicator of time domain validity than t_grav,Philip. For the attainment of steady-state infiltration, the reformulated t_grav is suitable for coarse-textured soils. Still neither the reformulated t_grav nor the classical t_grav,Philip are suitable for fine-textured soils for which t_grav is too conservative and t_grav,Philip too short. Using t_grav will improve predictions of the soil hydraulic parameters (particularly K_s) from infiltration data compared to t_grav,Philip.