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Rapid Determination of Hydraulic Conductivity in Clay Liners by Early-Time Analysis

Department of Land Resource Science, Univ. of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada N1G 2W1

*Corresponding author (pgroenev{at}lrs.uoguelph.ca).

ABSTRACT

To predict the effects of water or leachate infiltration into unsaturated field soils requires measurements of both the field-saturated hydraulic conductivity (K_fs) and the matric flux potential (_m). Measurement of these soil parameters commonly requires steady-state infiltration rates, which, in the slowly permeable clay liners that are found underlying municipal landfills, can require several weeks or months to be attained. The transient, capillary-dominated, early-time method of determining K_fs and _m has been found to provide a much faster, yet still reliable estimate of these flow parameters. Here, an analytical solution was utilized for early-time, one-dimensional infiltration under the conditions of an initial constant head followed by a falling-head phase. Six laboratory trials were conducted using precisely compacted clay cores to determine K_fs and _m during both early-time and steady-state flow domains. The results of these trials showed a favorable comparison between these two techniques, with the early-time constant-head and falling-head methods producing K_fs estimates that were 60 and 75% of their respective steady-state values. This suggests that the early-time determination of K_fs and _m on slowly permeable media has a definite practical advantage over lengthy steady-state analyses. A new, expeditious procedure for determining steady-state K_fs values of highly compacted soil cores, involving use of a Mariotte-equipped pressure plate chamber, was also developed and validated.

Received for publication January 21, 1997.

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