Spatial pore characteristics of unsaturated soils caused by dielectric geometric factors under permittivity method with 1 GHz frequency range

Abstract

A dielectric measurement device called a frequency domain reflectometry (FDR) has been designed and constructed for the dielectric measurement of unsaturated soil consisting of a volumetric soil water content of about 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 m3/m3 with different soil porosity around 0.40–0.45, respectively. The dielectric constant is measured in the frequency range 1 GHz. Soil calibration tests and tracer injection tests on standard sand and river sand are carried out in the laboratory. FDR measurement probes at different soil depths allow volumetric soil water content and dielectric constant measurements. The tracer concentration in the pore water is monitored by determining the dielectric constant, from the soil impedance. From the relationship between volumetric soil water content and dielectric constant, the specific calibration equations for the unsaturated soils were derived, and one can easily estimate the volumetric soil water content from the response of the measured dielectric constant for the soils. In the study of dielectric mixture models using α-value of 0.5 which is dielectric geometric factor, the effective porosity for the soils was computed to a range of 87–92% compared with the soil porosity.