Scaling of Horizontal Infiltration into Homogeneous Soils

Abstract The horizontal infiltration of water into uniform air‐dry soil columns is examined experimentally and theoretically. The applicability of the similar media concept to the scaling of soils having a wide textural range is studied. The microscopic characteristic length is determined from plots of the distance to the wetting front as a function of the square root of time, in such a way that these plots coalesce into one line when expressed in terms of scaled coordinates. If the soil water diffusivity of one soil is known, values of the microscopic characteristic length determined by the above method can be used to estimate the soil water diffusivity of the other soils.