Numerical study of non-saturated porous media flow

Resumo

Water is an essential natural resource in maintenance of life, considering physiological/biochemical
aspects related to living beings. In addition, water is livelihood for plants and animal species. Water resources

play an important role in countries’ economic development, as industries demand large volumes of water to man-
ufacture products. In agriculture, water is widely used for crop production, guaranteeing the supply of food to

the population. Due to the large use of such natural resource, it is necessary the optimization of its use. Irrigation
systems are required to supply the necessary amount of water to the soil, providing ideal humidity for plant growth.
Prediction of retention curve is an essential tool to describe water flow in soils, providing an estimative of water
availability used in plant growth, at different depths. The present work aims to study the water retention curve of

the non-saturated flow problem in soils by performing a numerical simulation of the soil moisture profile with re-
ported data in the literature, using Picard iterative scheme. To prove the effectiveness of the method, a comparison

with an implicit scheme is made, both based on finite differences.