Re: retention curves or characteristic curves?

[David Toll]

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Dear Allessandro,

I prefer the term 'soil-water characteristic curves' rather than 'water
retention curves' as they do represent characteristics of a soil. I agree
with Wenceslau that it is important to define whether we are talking about
drying from a saturated state or wetting from a dry state or scanning curves
between the two limits. To my mind, to properly define the 'soil-water
characteristic' we should include a complete drying-wetting loop. However
the term is often applied just to the drying (desorption) curve (by me as
well as others!). The term 'characteristic' should definitely be reserved
for the outer limits i.e. drying from saturated and wetting from dry.
Perhaps we should have different terminology to refer to the intermediate
scanning curves: 'soil-water curves' as opposed to 'soil-water
characteristic curves'?

PS I have copied this response to the unsaturated-soil list as well. You are
included in the unsaturated-soil list under both addresses:

tarantin@CERMES.ENPC.FR               Alessandro Tarantino
tarantin@ING.UNITN.IT                 Alessandro Tarantino

To mail to that list send a message to unsaturated-soil@jiscmail.ac.uk .

Regards

David Toll

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sowacs@aqua.ccwr.ac.za [mailto:owner-sowacs@aqua.ccwr.ac.za]
Sent: 10 February 2001 3:02 AM
Subject: retention curves or characteristic curves?

I have a doubt on how to name the water content/degree of saturation versus
suction relationship:

"water/moisture retention curve"

or

"soil water characteristic curve"?

..... yes, I know this is not a fundamental problem, but I am interested in
your opinion anyway.


Alessandro Tarantino



P.S. I am not sure to be still in the unsaturated list. How can I check it?


---------------------------------------------------------
Dr Alessandro TARANTINO
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica e Strutturale
Universitý degli Studi di Trento
Via Mesiano, 77
38050 Trento, Italy
Phone:  ++39-0461-882519
        ++39-0461-882551 (laboratory)
Fax:    ++39-0461-882599
E-mail: tarantin@ing.unitn.it
Web: http://www.ing.unitn.it/~labgtec/