Laboratory Investigation and Simulation of the Effect of Soil Layers Arrangement and their Thicknesses in Solute transport

In heterogeneous and layered soils, in order to a better management and description of chemicals movement on such media, perception of solute movement is very important. In this study, the effect of soil layers arrangement with different thicknesses on solute movement was investigated. For this purpose, two soils with different textures (i.e. loamy sand and clay loam) were used to prepare six two-layered columns (two 10cmcolumns, two 20cm-columns and two 30cm-columns), and the movement of sodium chloride in these columns was tested. First arrangement, namely the loamy sand layer was beneath the clay loam layer, was compared to second arrangement (the layers were swapped), and it was observed that the solute breakthrough and the appearance of peak concentration in the bottom of column were faster and the tail of breakthrough curve was shorter. By increasing the thickness of layers, the differences also increased, so that by swapping the two layers in 5 cm-layers, the difference between the times that breakthrough solute reaches to an almost constant concentration, the time of maximum concentration appearance and the duration of breakthrough curve tail time were 210, 250 and 40 minutes, respectively. Layers arrangement more than column length effected the solute movement, so that the peak concentration in second arrangement of 10cm-column was 40 min later than the first arrangement of 20cm-column and, the concentration in second arrangement of 20cm column was 100 min later than the first arrangement of 30cm-column. The solute movement was simulated by finite element method using the GeoStudio model. The simulation results have coefficient of determination (R2) more than 0.984 and root mean square error (RMSE) less than 0.530 g/L. This means that the simulation results were satisfactory.