Applicability of four infiltration models to infiltration characteristics of water repellent soils

Soil?water?repellency?has?great?influence?on?soil?infiltration, thereby?affecting?crop?yields. Foreign scholars have conducted some related researches before, but the research is still limited in China. This work discussed the adaptability of four infiltration models in infiltration characteristics of water repellent soils based on laboratory experiment data. Indoor soil column experiments were used to carry out the experiment of ponding infiltration to compare infiltration laws of soils in different ponding depths and repellency degree. Four models were used to analyze the characteristics of the soil infiltration rates. Results showed that the change of cumulative infiltration volume with the change of time can be expressed by power function, the amount of cumulative infiltration of wettable soil was obviously more than that of the water repellent soil. There was good linear relationship between the amount of cumulative infiltration and the wetting front distance. Green-Ampt model, Philip model, Kostiakov equation were used to simulate infiltration rate. Kostiakov equation had the best results and other models had different results for infiltration rates of different repellency soils. The infiltration ability of repel soil was obviously slower than that of the wettable soil.