Evaluation of Water Infiltration Characteristics of Clayey Soils with Sand Drain

Water scarcity has been a major issue worldwide owing to various reasons such as climate change, global warming, increasing population, etc. Moreover, it’s a known fact that the majority of the rainfall is wasted as runoff due to the presence of impervious strata such as pavements, impermeable soils, etc. Thus, proper rainwater management becomes the need of the hour to overcome this crisis. The present experimental studies detail the improvement in infiltration rate and volumetric water content of two clayey soils having distinct water retention properties by installing a sand drain. The variation in infiltration rate with time followed a three-staged pattern with a high initial infiltration rate due to cracks in the sample until the pre-healing time after which the cracks got sealed. Thereafter, the infiltration rate followed a declining trend until an equilibrium value was reached. Provision of sand drain resulted in an improvement of initial infiltration rate by 5 times and 2 times which subsequently subsided to an equilibrium value of 1.5 times and 1.3 times at 72 h in soils C1 and C2, respectively. Moreover, the volumetric water content of the soil sample resulted in an improvement of up to 1.4 times and 1.5 times in case of soil C1 and C2, respectively.