Abstract
This paper describes a particle-size distribution (PSD) curve fitting software for analyzing the soil PSD and soil physical properties. A better characterization of soil texture can be obtained by describing the soil PSD using mathematical models. The mathematical equations of soil PSD are mainly used as a basis to estimate the soil hydraulic properties. Until now, many attempts are made to represent PSD curves using mathematical models, but selecting the best PSD model requires fitting all models to the PSD data, which would be difficult and time-consuming. So far, no specific program has been developed to fit the PSD models to the experimental data. A practical user-friendly software called "PSD Curve Fitting Software" was developed and introduced to program a simultaneous fitting of all models on soil PSD data of all samples. Some of the capabilities of this software are calculating evaluation statistics for all models and soils and their statistical properties such as average, standard deviation, minimum and maximum for all models, the amount of models’ fitting parameters and their statistical properties for all soil samples, soil water retention curve by Arya and Paris (1981) and Meskini-Vishkaee et al. (2014) methods, soil hydraulic conductivity by Arya et al. (1999) method, different textural and hydraulic properties, specific surface area, and other descriptive statistics of PSD for all soil samples. All calculated parameters are presented in an output Excel file format by the software. The software runs under Windows XP/7/8/10.
Highlights
Particle-size distribution (PSD) is considered as a simple test and static physical characteristic of mineral soils that affects many important soil physical and chemical properties (Huang et al 2013), such as Atterberg limits and tensile strength (Bayat et al 2015), growth of plants (Huang et al 2013) and bacterial diversity (Chau et al 2011)
Soil PSD is typically applied in the classification systems of soils for engineering and agricultural purposes and many important soil parameters gained from this curve such as the specific surface area, coefficient of uniformity, coefficient of sorting, the effective particle size and the fines content (Vipulanandan and Ozgurel 2009)
It is extremely time consuming to fit all the PSD models to the experimental data and to select the best performing model, because there was not a full package or software to fit all models to the experimental data of several soil samples and users around the world are confronting a fundamental problem for fitting these models and selecting the most accurate model for their soils
Summary
Particle-size distribution (PSD) is considered as a simple test and static physical characteristic of mineral soils that affects many important soil physical and chemical properties (Huang et al 2013), such as Atterberg limits and tensile strength (Bayat et al 2015), growth of plants (Huang et al 2013) and bacterial diversity (Chau et al 2011). In order to obtain a more complete explanation of soil texture and continuous curves of the PSD, various PSD mathematical models are applied (Shangguan et al 2014). The objective of this study is to develop and introduce a type of software to fit all developed PSD models (Table S1 in the supplementary materials) to the experimental data including cumulative mass fraction versus diameter of particles of all soil samples and to estimate the important physical and mechanical properties of soils such as the soil water retention curve by Arya and Paris (1981) and Meskini-Vishkaee et al (2014) methods and the hydraulic conductivity by Arya et al (1999) method, that are related to soil PSD in a short time.
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