Closure to “Modified Green-Ampt Infiltration Model for Steady Rainfall” by J. Almedeij and I. I. Esen

Abstract

The writers thank the discusser for the interest shown in the original paper. The writers would like to point out that Eq. (14), which was proposed to improve the performance of the explicit approximation of Li et al. (1976), has sufficient accuracy for a range of dimensionless infiltration times for most of the conditions encountered in practice. For example, the dimensionless cumulative infiltration F values determined by the exact relationship given by Eq. (5) and by the approximate Eq. (14) are almost identical for dimensionless times t ≤ 2. For the silt loam discussed in the original paper, this corresponds to about 17.5 h of continuous rainfall of constant intensity. For t < 5, the maximum difference in the F values would be less than 3%. This is much less than the probable error in selecting appropriate values for the hydraulic conductivity, capillary suction head, and the available porosity. Fig. 1 of the closure presents a comparison between Eq. (4) of the discussion and Eq. (14) of the original paper. Eq. (14) can be considered more accurate for t ≤ 1, which corresponds to about 8.7 h for the case study of silt loam. However, for considerably higher t values, Eq. (4) is more accurate than Eq. (14). The writers agree that to satisfy the wide range of t , improvement in accuracy can be obtained by changing the entire form of the original model of Li et al. (1976).