Flow systems exist where both ends are saturated but places within may be unsaturated. The student is challenged to deduce the requirements for such a system and to test their deduction with additional experiments. Flow systems exist where both ends are unsaturated but places within may be saturated. The student is challenged to deduce the requirements for such a system and to test their deduction with additional experiments. In general, water movement in soils is very dynamic and changes from time to time.
Infiltration is the process of water entering the soil surface.
This exercise is designed to help users understand why this occurs. Thus it forms a nice bridge from an introductory study of steady-state flow to the more complex transient flow. Written by D.L. Nofziger, July, 2000.