Hydraulic Contacts Controlling Water Flow across Porous Grains
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Date
2007-08
Publication Type
Journal Article
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yes
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Abstract
Water flow between porous grains varies widely depending on the water distribution in contacts between grains. The hydraulic behavior of contacts varies from highly conductive when water fills the contacts to a bottleneck to flow as water pressure drops and contact asperities rapidly drain. Such changes greatly impact the hydraulic conductivity of porous grain packs such as aggregated soil. The dominant driving force of water flow across contacts is capillarity, often quantified relative to gravity and viscous forces using the capillary and Bond numbers. For fast water infiltration, viscous forces dominate. For simplicity we modeled the water distribution between spherical porous grains whose surfaces are covered by spherical bumps of much smaller radii. We provide experimental evidence obtained by neutron radiography and synchrotron-based x-ray tomographic microscopy documenting transitions in the flow behavior across contacts.
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published
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Journal / series
Volume
E 76 (2)
Pages / Article No.
26311
Publisher
American Physical Society
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Edition / version
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Date collected
Date created
Subject
aggregation; capillarity; flow through porous media; hydraulic systems; neutron radiography; porous materials; surface tension; water; X-ray microscopy
Organisational unit
03213 - Flühler, Hannes (emeritus)
03812 - Or, Dani (emeritus) / Or, Dani (emeritus)
09732 - Carminati, Andrea / Carminati, Andrea
Notes
Received 19 October 2006, Revised 22 June 2007, Published 21 August 2007.