Experiment and Modelling Characterisation of Clay Effect on Soil Water Retention Capacity

Abstract

This paper reports a research work on assessing clay content effect on the water retention capacity of clayey sandy soils. At first, experimental tests were conducted to measure the soil water retention curves (SWRCs) of clayey sandy soils. A total of four different soil samples, which have clay content of 0, 15, 30 and 50%, respectively, by total soil sample weight, were measured. Secondly, a revision of a physical–chemical (PC) analytical model previously proposed has been reviewed and adopted to represent the SWRC measurements and compared for its predictive performance against the classic van Genuchten model and the original PC model. The experimental results demonstrated that clay content has a significant influence on soil water retention capacity, showing that a positive correlation generally exists between them. The modelling results showed that the revised analytical model not only produced a good representation for the soil water retention curves over whole range of soil water content, particularly at low water content side, but also provided advanced insight into the fundamental physics underlying soil water retention mechanisms. The analysis of its parametric data highlights the functions of the involved physics and their roles shaping the SWRCs, which intrinsically relate to specific surface area, pore size distribution, and particle size and shape. At last, the model was used to describe the pore size distribution from a revised concept against conventional approach. However, the revised concept and approach needs further wide verification and is open for discussion.