Identification of the hydraulic conductivity using a global optimization method

S. Gómez, G. Severino, L. Randazzo, G. Toraldo and J.M. Otero

Agricultural Water Management, 2009, vol. 96, issue 3, 504-510

Abstract: A method to determine the soil hydraulic conductivity via an internal drainage experiment is presented. Identifying the parameters of the hydraulic conductivity is achieved by solving an inverse global optimization problem that uses the water contents measured at different depths and times as matching flow variables. The optimization procedure is combined with a recently developed analytical model for the water content propagation, which essentially assumes that the flow is gravity-driven. A crucial (from the identification point of view) parameter of such a model is the initial position zW of the draining front, determining the interface between the wetted and dried zone. By using an evolutionary algorithm specifically developed for this problem, it is shown that if information upon zW is not a priori available, the identification of the hydraulic conductivity is not possible. However, assuming that zW is known (i.e. measured), and by dividing the model variables by zW, the optimization is able to fully identify the soil hydraulic conductivity. Finally, in order to show the robustness of the proposed approach, it is shown that the method leads to very good estimates of the hydraulic conductivity even if data are noise-affected, provided that the optimization procedure is coupled to the (Tikhonov) regularization approach.

Keywords: Drainage; flow; Hydraulic; conductivity; Global; optimization; Parameter; identification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378-3774(08)00230-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:96:y:2009:i:3:p:504-510

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().