Introducing an appropriate packing method in disturbed soil columns and its verification to achieve a homogeneous porous media

The initial assumption of many laboratory, greenhouse and lysimetric experiments is the longtitudal and latitudal homogeneity of repacked soil columns as well as homogeneity between different replications. Despite the great importance of these assumptions, a few reports, especially among domestic studies, have discussed the details of packing procedure. On the other hand, in most cases no criterion is introduced as verification standards, while the methods introduced are dependent on soil sampling which itself is destructive. This paper has discussed the details of packing procedure used for filling 36 cylindrical lysimeters having 39.5 cm internal diameter and 150 cm height. In addition, 3 nondestructive criteria have been introduced to verify the packing procedure and homogeneity in repacked soil columns. These criteria include the soil surface depression, variation in field capacity (FC) point, and the slope of breakthrough curves (BTCs). Based on all introduced criteria, the introduced packing procedure produced longtitudal and latitudal homogeneity in repacked soil columns and similarity between 36 replications.