Green-Ampt Infiltration Models for Varied Field Conditions: A Revisit

The Green-Ampt (GA) infiltration model is a simplified version of the physically based full hydrodynamic model, known as the Richards equation. The simplicity and accuracy of this model facilitates for its use in many field problems, such as, infiltration computation in rainfall-runoff modelling, effluent transport in groundwater modelling studies, irrigation management studies including drainage systems etc. The numerous infiltration models based on the Green-Ampt approach have been widely investigated for their applicability in various scenarios of homogeneous soils. However, recent advances in physically based distributed rainfall-runoff modeling demands for the use of improved infiltration models for layered soils with non-uniform initial moisture conditions under varying rainfall patterns to capture the actual infiltration process that exists in nature. The difficulty that modelers are facing now-a-days includes the estimation of time of ponding and the application of the infiltration model to unsteady rainfall events occurring in heterogeneous soil conditions. The investigation in this direction exhibits that only few infiltration models can handle these situations. Hence, it is of vital importance to analyze the usefulness of different variants of the Green-Ampt infiltration models in terms of their degree of accuracy, complexity and applicability limits. This paper provides a brief review of these infiltration models to bring out their usefulness in the rainfall-runoff and irrigation modeling studies as well as the drawbacks associated with these models. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011