Arrangement of 9 suction plates

Controlled lower boundary conditions for special lysimeter experiments in the laboratory

• Composition of a “synthetic soil” with defined heterogeneity: frozen cubes of artificial quartz sand/silt of different grain size are arranged randomly to a soil body of 1 m x 1 m x 1 m.
• Suction cups at the bottom of this artificial soil are individually supplied with a vacuum and provide precisely controlled lower boundary conditions for the experiment.
• Together with a sprinkling head and an evaporation chamber this set-up facilitates precisely controlled solute transport experiments, which are used to validate numerical models.
• Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) provides 3D information about the distribution of water content and salt concentrations in the soil body.

• Bechtold, M., et al. "Upward transport in a three-dimensional heterogeneous laboratory soil under evaporation conditions." Vadose Zone Journal 11.2 (2012).