Abstract
Soil physical properties vary with time and location in fields.Although the well-known scaling method based upon the similar media concept (proposed by Millar and Millar1956) has been widely used for describing heterogeneous soil physical properties in fields, the similar media concept can be applied only when the geometrical similarities among soils are guaranteed.A non-similar media concept was introduced to the scaling theory.This new scaling concept could predict air entry suction and saturated hydraulic conductivity as a result of changes in the bulk density using characteristic lengths for solid and pore phases, and a shape factor for solid phase.The comparisons between experimental data and predictions for several types of soils revealed that the scaling of saturated hydraulic conductivities using the non-similar media concept had an advantage over the traditional Kozeny-Carmann equation. The relation between soil structures and shape factors was discussed in detail.It was shown that the applicability of the non-similar media concept depends on the reliability of the shape factor for solid phase.
