Practical 3: WATER INFILTRATION AND REDISTRIBUTION

Surname, Initials: Galela, X.I

Student No. 20656573

Aim Of The Experiment

The aim is to investigate water movement in a soil column in the absence and presence of an
“engineered” capillary break.
Material And Methods

1) Carefully peruse Figure 1 a-h and follow the instruction below:

a) Collect any soil;

b) Break aggregates by rubbing the soil gently;
c) Use a paper as funnel and place it in the glass jar;
d & e) Transfer the soil to the glass jar, keep the funnel upright with your hand at the bottom of the funnel;
f) Mark the original soil level;
g) Carefully consolidate the soil by pushing it down with your thumb, you are applying a force of about 40 –50 N;
h) Use a tablespoon to level the soil surface.
2) Add 4 tablespoons of water (approx. 40 ml), spread the water evenly across the surface with the spoon. NB!
Do not use too much water to avoid the risk of saturating the whole container. If you used less soil halve the
amount of water (20 ml), however do not use less than one tablespoon.
3) Following the movement of water by marking the wetting front as shown in Figure 2 a & b.
4) Monitor and mark the progress of the wetting front till it stops (approx. 24 hour). Make at least 5 different
measurement if possible in this time.
5) After the water movement stopped, take a picture of the soil column with various recorded wetting fronts
over time (see Figure 2b).
6) Afterwards, take your ruler and measure the movement for each time interval (from the soil surface
downwards) at 3 different points (see Figure 2a) and record the data in Table 1. This is also a good experiment
to observe and appreciate the great spatial variability that reside in soil).
7) Repeat the experimental steps 1a-e, however, this time fill the jar till it is about 2/3 full.
8) Consolidate the soil again with your thumb and level it with a spoon.
9) Add your engineered capillary break by adding a layer of crushed egg shells (from at least 2- 3 eggs) to one
halve of the area (Figure 2c).
10) Afterwards, fill the container up again and repeat the consolidation step followed by the levelling of the soil
surface.
11) It is important that your capillary break is not too close to the soil surface. If it is about in the middle after
the consolidation then it will be fine (Figure 2d). The consolidation in in the previous step will push it lower.
12) Repeat steps 2 to 6 to collect your water movement data.
13) However, this time record both the water movement of the side with the capillary break as well as the side
without it. Report the data in Table 2.

Results

Table 1: Movement of the wetting front at various times in experiment without the capillary break.

Time Inverval Time (Min) Replicate (mm)

1 2 3 Mean Median

1 0 0 0 0 0.00 0
2 60 12 17 22 17.00 17
3 240 27 30 33 30.00 30
4 360 38 39 41 39.33 39
5 540 40 46 40 42.00 40

Figure 1 Recording of wetting front over time for experiment without capillary break.

Table 2: Movement of the wetting front at various times in the experiment with the capillary break.
 Capillary Side

Time Inverval Time (Min) Replicate (mm)

1 2 3 Mean Median

1 0 0 0 0 0.00 0
2 120 10 13 15 12.67 13
3 480 39 40 52 43.67 40
4 600 65 67 70 67.33 67

Time Inverval Time (Min) Replicate(mm)

1 2 3 Mean Median

1 0 0 0 0 0.00 0
2 120 10 13 15 12.67 13
3 480 37 45 48 43.33 45
4 600 56 60 65 60.33 60

Figure 2: Recording of wetting front over time for experiment with capillary break

Additional information
If you know how to draw graphs in Excel, plot mean or median movement (y-axis) vs time (x axis)