Coefficients for Quantifying Subsurface Drainage Rates

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 793-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Wayne Skaggs

Abstract. It is proposed that technical papers on drainage research studies and engineered design projects should report standard coefficients or parameters that characterize the hydraulics of the system. The following coefficients define key subsurface drainage rates that can be used to quantify and compare the hydraulics of drainage systems across sites, soils and geographic locations. (1) The steady subsurface drainage rate (cm/d) corresponding to a saturated profile with a ponded surface. This subsurface drainage rate defines the length of time that water remains ponded on the soil surface following large rainfall events. It is proposed that this rate be called the Kirkham Coefficient (KC) in honor of Professor Don Kirkham who derived analytical solutions for saturated drained profiles for most soil and boundary conditions of interest. (2) Drainage intensity (DI), which represents the drainage rate (cm/d) when the water table midway between parallel drains is coincident with the surface. The DI can be estimated by the Hooghoudt equation and is dependent on the effective saturated hydraulic conductivity of the profile, drain depth, spacing, and depth of the soil profile or restrictive layer. (3) The drainage coefficient (DC), which quantifies the hydraulic capacity of the system. This value is the rate (cm/d) that the outlet works can remove water from the site. It is dependent on the size, slope, and hydraulic roughness of the laterals, submains, mains, and, in cases where pumped outlets are used, the pumping capacity. Routine inclusion of these three coefficients in the documentation of research and design projects would facilitate comparison of results from different soils and drainage systems, and generally, the meta-analysis of data pertaining to drainage studies. Keywords: Drainage, Drainage intensity, Drainage coefficient, Drainage nomenclature, Kirkham Coefficient.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 232-241
Author(s):  
Na Ta ◽  
Chutian Zhang ◽  
Hongru Ding ◽  
Qingfeng Zhang

AbstractTillage and slope will influence soil surface roughness that changes during rainfall events. This study tests this effect under controlled conditions quantified by geostatistical and fractal indices. When four commonly adopted tillage practices, namely, artificial backhoe (AB), artificial digging (AD), contour tillage (CT), and linear slope (CK), were prepared on soil surfaces at 2 × 1 × 0.5 m soil pans at 5°, 10°, or 20° slope gradients, artificial rainfall with an intensity of 60 or 90 mm h−1 was applied to it. Measurements of the difference in elevation points of the surface profiles were taken before rainfall and after rainfall events for sheet erosion. Tillage practices had a relationship with fractal indices that the surface treated with CT exhibited the biggest fractal dimension D value, followed by the surfaces AD, AB, and CK. Surfaces under a stronger rainfall tended to have a greater D value. Tillage treatments affected anisotropy differently and the surface CT had the strongest effect on anisotropy, followed by the surfaces AD, AB, and CK. A steeper surface would have less effect on anisotropy. Since the surface CT had the strongest effect on spatial variability or the weakest spatial autocorrelation, it had the smallest effect on runoff and sediment yield. Therefore, tillage CT could make a better tillage practice of conserving water and soil. Simultaneously, changes in semivariogram and fractal parameters for surface roughness were examined and evaluated. Fractal parameter – crossover length l – is more sensitive than fractal dimension D to rainfall action to describe vertical differences in soil surface roughness evolution.


2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary R. Sands ◽  
Inhong Song ◽  
Lowell M. Busman ◽  
Bradley Hansen

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
Chusnul Arif ◽  
Budi Indra Setiawan ◽  
Satyanto Krido Saptomo ◽  
Hiroshi Matsuda ◽  
Koremasa Tamura ◽  
...  

Subsurface drainage technology may offer a useful option in improving crop productivity by preventing water-logging in poor drainage paddy fields. The present study compared two paddy fields with and without sheet-pipe type subsurface drainage on land and water productivities in Indonesia. Sheet-pipe typed is perforated plastic sheets with a hole diameter of 2 mm and made from high-density polyethylene. It is commonly installed 30–50 cm below the soil surface and placed horizontally by a machine called a mole drainer, and then the sheets will automatically be a capillary pipe. Two fields were prepared, i.e., the sheet-pipe typed field (SP field) and the non-sheet-pipe typed field (NSP field) with three rice varieties (Situ Bagendit, Inpari 6 Jete, and Inpari 43 Agritan). In both fields, weather parameters and water depth were measured by the automatic weather stations, soil moisture sensors and water level sensors. During one season, the SP field drained approximately 45% more water compared to the NSP field. Thus, it caused increasing in soil aeration and producing a more significant grain yield, particularly for Inpari 43 Agritan. The SP field produced a 5.77 ton/ha grain yield, while the NSP field was 5.09 ton/ha. By producing more grain yield, the SP field was more effective in water use as represented by higher water productivity by 20%. The results indicated that the sheet-pipe type system developed better soil aeration that provides better soil conditions for rice.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amer Al-Haddad ◽  
◽  
Dhuha Mahdi ◽  

Engineers have employed various ways to protect drain openings from the entry of sediment with varying degrees of success. This study aims to compare and evaluate the hydraulic performance and efficiency of using natural graded gravel filter and crushed gravel filter in drainage systems. An aquifer tank (sand tank) 70 cm long, 50 cm wide and 80 cm high, a perforated drain pipe of 50 mm diameter was used in the laboratory work. The laboratory study was performed with two types of soil: loam and loamy sand. These two soils were used with the two types of gravel filters after taking the particle size distribution test for the two soils. For each case, the inflow was applied to the model from the soil surface (to represent irrigation condition) and from the sides of the tank (to represent sub –surface flow condition and effluence of the groundwater). Each case involved ten runs; for each run, discharge, total head loss, and amount of sediment were recorded. It was found that crushed gravel filter would work similarly to natural graded gravel filter after a certain time from the beginning of runs. It was also found that the discharge and sediment when using crushed gravel filter were close to or equal to that with natural graded gravel filter. The hydraulic conductivity and the exit gradient values were calculated in this research. It was found that their values were so different between the two types of filters, but at the end of the laboratory work, the hydraulic conductivity would be approximately the same. The exit gradient of crushed gravel filter was lower than that of natural graded gravel filter due to the large pores between the filter particles. Finally, the results showed that, it is possible to use crushed gravel filter material in drainage systems, which is less costly and easier to place than natural graded gravel filter.


Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1581
Author(s):  
Mohamed Alkassem Alosman ◽  
Stéphane Ruy ◽  
Samuel Buis ◽  
Patrice Lecharpentier ◽  
Jean Bader ◽  
...  

Surface irrigation is known as a highly water-consuming system and needs to be optimized to save water. Models can be used for this purpose but require soil parameters at the field scale. This paper aims to estimate effective soil parameters by combining: (i) a surface flow-infiltration model, namely CALHY; (ii) an automatic fitting algorithm based on the SIMPLEX method; and (iii) easily accessible and measurable data, some of which had never been used in such a process, thus minimizing parameter estimation errors. The validation of the proposed approach was performed through three successive steps: (1) examine the physical meaning of the fitted parameters; (2) verify the accuracy of the proposed approach using data that had not been served in the fitting process; and (3) validate using data obtained from independent irrigation events. Three parameters were estimated with a low uncertainty: the saturated hydraulic conductivity Ks, the hydraulic roughness k, and the soil water depletion ∆θ. The estimation uncertainty of the soil surface depressional storage parameter H0 was of the same order of magnitude of its value. All experimental datasets were simulated very well. Performance criteria were similar during both the fitting and validation stages.


2003 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.-L. Bertrand-Krajewski ◽  
J.-P. Bardin ◽  
M. Mourad ◽  
Y. Béranger

Assessing the functioning and the performance of urban drainage systems on both rainfall event and yearly time scales is usually based on online measurements of flow rates and on samples of influent and effluent for some rainfall events per year. In order to draw pertinent scientific and operational conclusions from the measurement results, it is absolutely necessary to use appropriate methods and techniques in order to i) calibrate sensors and analytical methods, ii) validate raw data, iii) evaluate measurement uncertainties, iv) evaluate the number of rainfall events to sample per year in order to determine performance indicator with a given uncertainty. Based on previous work, the paper gives a synthetic review of required methods and techniques, and illustrates their application to storage and settling tanks. Experiments show that, despite controlled and careful experimental conditions, relative uncertainties are about 20% for flow rates in sewer pipes, 6-10% for volumes, 25-35% for TSS concentrations and loads, and 18-276% for TSS removal rates. In order to evaluate the annual pollutant interception efficiency of storage and settling tanks with a given uncertainty, efforts should first be devoted to decrease the sampling uncertainty by increasing the number of sampled events.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pengfei Zhang ◽  
Samuel T. Ariaratnam

The rate of urbanization has been impacted by global economic growth. A strong economy results in more people moving to already crowded urban centers to take advantage of increased employment opportunities often resulting in sprawling of the urban area. More natural land resources are being exploited to accommodate these anthropogenic activities. Subsequently, numerous natural land resources such as green areas or porous soil, which are less flood-prone and more permeable are being converted into buildings, parking lots, roads and underground utilities that are less permeable to storm water runoff from rain events. With the diminishing of the natural landscape that can drain storm water during a rainfall event, urban underground drainage systems are being designed and built to tackle the excess runoff resulting from urbanization. However, the rapid pace of urbanization has profoundly affected the formation of urban runoff thus resulting in the existing underground drainage system being unable to handle current flow conditions. This paper discusses storm water impacts in urbanized areas globally by reviewing historical storm water events and mitigation strategies accompanied with runoff reduction performance that are considered simultaneously for the purpose of relieving the stress on underground drainage systems. It was found that the stormwater impact on ten selected typical urban areas were enormously destructive followed by billions of direct economy loss, fatalities, damaged properties and residents’ relocations. Furthermore, the meta-analysis of selected six runoff mitigation methods indicated that the average runoff reduction percent ranged from 43% to 61% under different rain events in various installed sites across different event years.


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