Author(s)

St. Yannopoulos, C. Tzimopoulos

Abstract

Solving a double porosity soil characteristic curve with the quasi-Newton method (BFGS) St. Yannopoulos & C. Tzimopoulos Department of Rural and Surveying Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Abstract The characteristic curve of almost all the existing soils can be satisfactorily simulated by an S-shape curve. However, in cases where the medium has a double porosity (macroporous soils, unsaturated fractured rocks and fissured ground water systems), the S-shape curve fails to describe the characteristic curve. Gerke and van Genuchten [14] have described the physical structure of such a medium and Zhang and van Genuchten [33] have proposed a new model with five parameters, which can simulate the double porosity soils. In this article a special algorithm is developed in order to optimize the new function describing the double porosity characteristic curve. The algorithm is based on the theory of the quasi-Newton method (BFGS) 1 Introduction Solution of unsaturat

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