4. Flow of Water Through Soils Explained: Hydraulic Conductivity, Darcy’s Law & Permeability Tests
The water flow (SEEPAGE) characteristics are very important in many applications of earthworks and structures such as earth dams, levees, embankments, underground structures, excavations, etc. Hydraulic heads and Water flow: Consider a water flow through a soil specimen filled in a clean pipe as shown below: Because of the water-level difference between the left-side and the right- side of the pipe, water flows from left to right. The water level difference is called total head loss Δh which is a source of energy, to create a flow. Classic Bernoulli’s equation is used to define the flow of water through soil masses. h t = h z + h p + h v = z + u/ g w + v 2 /2g Where: h t = total head h z = elevation head h p = pressure head h v = velocity head u = pore water pressure v = flow velocity The velo...