Abstract
Infiltration of water into soil is a key process in various fields, including hydrology, hydraulic works, agriculture, and transport of pollutants. Depending upon rainfall and soil characteristics as well as from initial and very complex boundary conditions, an exhaustive understanding of infiltration and its mathematical representation can be challenging. During the last decades, significant research effort has been expended to enhance the seminal contributions of Green, Ampt, Horton, Philip, Brutsaert, Parlange and many other scientists. This review paper retraces some important milestones that led to the definition of basic mathematical models, both at the local and field scales. Some open problems, especially those involving the vertical and horizontal inhomogeneity of the soils, are explored. Finally, rainfall infiltration modeling over surfaces with significant slopes is also discussed.
Highlights
Brutsaert [1] offers a concise definition of infiltration as “the entry of water into the soil surface and its subsequent vertical motion through the soil profile”
In spite of the continuous developments in infiltration modeling, challenges regarding infiltration exist for many scales of hydrologic interest
The conflicting results from different studies on the effect of slope on infiltration over homogeneous surfaces show that a solution continues to elude researchers
Summary
Brutsaert [1] offers a concise definition of infiltration as “the entry of water into the soil surface and its subsequent vertical motion through the soil profile”. Even though the representation of the main natural processes in applied hydrology requires areal infiltration modeling for both flat and sloping surfaces, research activity has been limited to the development of local or point infiltration models for many years. A few years later, Reference [30] refined this concept by referring to it as an infiltration infiltration rate that declines exponentially during a storm, and published a conceptual rate that declines exponentially during a storm, and published a conceptual derivation of the derivation of the exponential decay infiltration equation. The dark columns represent the rainfall rate, r(t), curve for a silty loam soil. The dark columns represent the rainfall rate, r(t), observed in the Umbria observed in the Umbria Region (Central Italy) during a generic frontal system. The dashed columns represent the simulated represent the simulated behavior of infiltration rate, f(t), during the rainfall event.
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