Abstract
The study presents a numerical infiltration model of a hysteretic flow coupled with general mass conservation for practical application to unsaturated soil. In unsaturated soil, hysteresis is an important phenomenon in the complicated hydrological processes, and it is usually ignored when simulating the relationship of soil water content. The governing equation of unsaturated flow is the Richards equation, and it is difficult to obtain the analytic solutions because of the variation of temporal boundary conditions and the dynamics of change of soil water content in the vadose zone. The numerical solution is solved by the finite difference method technique with the Picard iteration scheme combined with the hysteresis model derived by Huang et al. (2005) and the mass conservation control within simulation domain. The results showed that the mixed form had better mass conservation. The present numerical solutions with the hysteresis model were verified by Gillham's experimental data of 1979. The results of the present mixed form numerical approximations with hysteresis effect are better than without hysteresis. In order to raise the accuracy of the soil water relationship numerical model, hysteresis and mass conservation are important factors in infiltration processes. Copyright Β© 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.