GD003: Silty Sand Permeability Data from southern Chile

Axel Montecinos1, Gonzalo Montalva1,2, Jose Vargas1
1 Universidad de Concepción, Chile
2 currently at Washington State University, USA

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State of the practice in surface hydraulic conductivity (K_fs ) measurement is well developed. Laboratory test are conducted in sites where undisturbed sampling is possible; whenever this is not possible field methods, known as “constant head methods”, give acceptable results. However, in granular soils with high fine content, methods such as Haefeli and Matsuo are either costly or inaccurate. This paper presents an approach to conduct field tests as “falling head” tests, and the results are compared with two generally accepted methods. The computed values for K_fs are always higher than laboratory values, this can be explained by the lack of a clear wet front in silty sands. The data contains more than 60 field tests.

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KEYWORDS:  hydraulic conductivity, permeability, infiltration capacity, double ring infiltrometer


Correspondence: Gonzalo Montalva, gmontalva@udec.cl , gmontalva@wsu.edu
Reference:  Montecinos, AJ, Montalva, GA, Vargas, J, (2008). Determining hydraulic conductivity, comparison and proposal for silty sands. Ingeniería hidráulica en México, vol. XXIII, num. 2, pp. 149-155. (In Spanish)

Date of entry: 02.2009

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