Analysis of hydrological processes in deforming soils generally involves use of some form of a referential, or material, coordinate transformation. In the most commonly used of these relationships, ...there appear two macroscopic soil mass density factors, that associated with the configuration of the soil at a reference time t = 0, and that associated with its configuration at a later (arbitrary) time. In some previous work, the assumption was made that these bulk densities could be evaluated at the same space-fixed point. In an illustrative application to dual-energy gamma-ray data on the swelling of a clay loam during infiltration, this approximation is shown here to predict vertical displacement values that are as much as 7 mm in excess of values obtained without the approximation. Moreover, the approximation fails to satisfy macroscopic mass balance. It is also shown that the direction, downward or upward, of the vertical displacement of macroscopic body-points depends on the boundary condition used in the integration of the referential coordinate transformation; i.e, depends on whether the integration begins at the soil surface or at a point below the wetting front. Since these two integration pathways are mathematically equivalent, it is argued that a systematic comparison between results obtained using them can serve a useful purpose in detecting occurrences of lateral expansion or systematic errors in the experimental data.
Non-aqueous phase liquids enter the vadose zone as a result of spills or leaking underground storage facilities, thus contaminating groundwater resources. Measuring the contaminant concentrations is ...important in assessing the risk to human health and the environment and to develop effective remediation. This research presents the development and application of the light transmission method (LTM) for three-phase flow systems, aimed at investigating unstable fingered flow in a soil-air-oil-water system. The LTM uses the hue and intensity of light transmitted through a slab chamber to measure fluid content, since total liquid content is a function of both hue and light intensity. Evaluation of the LTM is obtained by comparing experiments with LTM and synchrotron X-rays. The LTM captures the spatial resolution of the fluid contents and can provide new insights into rapidly changing, two-phase and three-phase flow systems. Application of the LTM as a visualization technique for environmental and physical phenomena is noted. Visualization by LTM of groundwater remediation by surfactants as well as visualization of model cluster growth and fractal dimensions was also explored.
