Estimation of Unsaturated Soil Hydrodynamic Parameters Using Inverse Problem Technique

Mathematical simulation of flow toward drains is an important and indispensable stagein drainage design and management. many related models have been developed, but mostof them simulate the saturated flow toward drains without a due consideration of theunsaturated zone. in this study, the two dimensional differential equation governingsaturated and unsaturated flow in porous media is numerically solved and water tablevariations between drains predicted. by introducing and linking a proper optimizationmodel to the numerical one, saturated and unsaturated soil hydrodynamic parameterswere estimated within the inverse problem technique context. data for calibration andverification were provided through a conduction of laboratory experimentation. otherlaboratory data were also employed for the proposed model evaluation. the resultsindicated that in addition to a prediction of the water table variations between drains, theinverse problem model can be employed to estimate the unsaturated soil hydrodynamicparameters with a high degree of precision.