Seasonal Variation of Infiltration and Comparison of Different Infiltration Models in Sandy Soils

Abstract

Knowing infiltration characteristics is very useful in hydrological studies of agricultural soils. Soil hydraulic parameters such as steady infiltration rate, sorptivity, and transmissivity can exhibit appreciable spatial variability. Infiltration models are very helpful in estimating these hydraulic parameters and designing and evaluating surface irrigation systems The main objective of the present work is estimation and inter-comparison of infiltration models which are used to evaluate the infiltration rates of National Institute of Technology (NIT)-campus in district of Rourkela, Odisha (India) and for this study, field infiltration tests were carried out at ten different locations comprising of 150 observations by use of double ring infiltrometer. The potential of four empirical infiltration models (Kostiakov, Horton’s, Philips and Green Ampt’s ) were evaluated by least–square fitting to observed infiltration data. Each infiltration model performs best in specific kind of soil and the present study is based on the performance of these infiltration models in sandy soils. Four statistical comparison criteria including Average mean error, maximum absolute percentage error (MAPE), Bias and root mean square error (RMSE) were used to determine the best performing infiltration models.