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Posted 13 years ago by Terry CORDONNIER engineer
Hello,

I would like to change my "Influent seepage law".
Does anyone know something about "Van Genuchten" parameter ??

Regards,

Terry
Posted 13 years ago by Denim Umeshkumar Anajwala
Yes, what do you want to know? The parameters {a,n} generate an x-y curve (suction pressure/head vs water content).

The "a" parameter controls the x-intercept (suction pressure/head axis) and the "n" parameter the slope of the soil-water characteristic curve.
In FEFLOW "a" has dimensions of [1/L] so the x-axis is head and n is dimensionless. Please correct me if I've got this backwards - I am working from memory and the reciprocal value for "a" is easy to mess up. Gravel curves are steep with low drainage thresholds (close to the water-content axis), clay curves have lower slopes and higher drainage thresholds.

Some simple rules for FITTING COEFFICIENT "a"
High "a" pushes the curve away from the the water-content axis, that is, the material has a high suction threshold before it starts to drain (clays tend to do this).
Low "a" means that water can enter at low pressure/head, that is, the material will readily admit water (sands and gravels do this).
In units [1/m] a  reasonable range for most materials is 0.005  to 5 with clay at the low end (high head, low 1/head) and gravels at the high end (low head, high 1/head).

Some simple rules for the EXPONENT "n"
"n" must be > 1.0 - stick to the range approximate range 1.0 to 5.0
"n" is higher for free draining materials (I don't like values greater than 5 for numerical stability reasons but this is not a requirement)
"n" is low for materials that are hard to drain and n = 1 generates a material that does not drain under any suction!

FEFLOW has lots of alternatives for unsaturated soils - the on I'm taking about is the default model type 0 - the vanG-Mualem model. You need to specify maximum and residual saturation and the unsaturated porosity (in addition to "a" and "n").

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