Hydraulic characterization of porous materials using a rainfall simulator to model flows in natural and artificial non-saturated materials

This paper deals with Hydraulic characterization of porous materials using a rainfall simulator. Through this study, we are mainly targeting the cumulated runoff curves, which are obtained using a rainfall simulator to establish, with good approximation, hydrodynamic characteristics of the soils such as the continual losses and initial time. Besides that, the approach of the infiltration mechanism in a non-saturated environment with respect to the model of a draining reservoir into a soil type made up of two superimposed layers with different permeabilities enables to formulate mathematically the drainage porosity depending on continual losses and initial time measured during the simulation and the applied rain. Thereby, it becomes conceivable to compute behaviors of soils or artificial materials, in particular in terms of infiltrated volumes and runoff volumes that rains, with different intensities, would induce. To support our aims, four specific cases have been carried out. The results presented allow to deepen the understanding of the flow modeling of natural and artificial materials unsaturated.