Does the Darcy–Buckingham Law Apply to Flow through Unsaturated Porous Rock?
1
CNR National Research Council, IRSA Water Research Institute, via Francesco De Blasio 5, 70132 Bari, Italy
2
US Geological Survey (USGS), 345 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Water 2020, 12(10), 2668; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12102668
Received: 13 August 2020
/
Revised: 20 September 2020
/
Accepted: 21 September 2020
/
Published: 23 September 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Environmental Hydraulics)
The Darcy–Buckingham (DB) law, critical to the prediction of unsaturated flow, is widely used but has rarely been experimentally tested, and therefore may not be adequate in certain conditions. Failure of this law would imply that the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity is not constant for a given water content, as assumed in nearly all subsurface flow models. This study aims to test the DB law on unsaturated porous rock, complementing the few previous tests, all done on soils. Two lithotypes of calcareous porous rocks were tested. The quasi-steady centrifuge method was used to measure the flux density for different centrifugal driving forces while maintaining essentially constant water content, as required. Any deviations from the direct proportionality of the measured flux and the applied force would indicate a violation of the DB law. Our results show that, for the tested rocks and conditions, no physical phenomena occurred to cause a failure of the DB law.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
Darcy’s law; unsaturated flow; hydraulic conductivity; porous rock; centrifuge
▼
Show Figures
Graphical abstract
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Turturro, A.C.; Caputo, M.C.; Perkins, K.S.; Nimmo, J.R. Does the Darcy–Buckingham Law Apply to Flow through Unsaturated Porous Rock? Water 2020, 12, 2668. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12102668
AMA Style
Turturro AC, Caputo MC, Perkins KS, Nimmo JR. Does the Darcy–Buckingham Law Apply to Flow through Unsaturated Porous Rock? Water. 2020; 12(10):2668. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12102668
Chicago/Turabian StyleTurturro, Antonietta C., Maria C. Caputo, Kim S. Perkins, and John R. Nimmo. 2020. "Does the Darcy–Buckingham Law Apply to Flow through Unsaturated Porous Rock?" Water 12, no. 10: 2668. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12102668
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
