CONVERSION OF THE MODIFIED KOVÁCS MODEL PARAMETERS TO THE BROOKS & COREY AND VAN GENUCHTEN MODEL PARAMETERS FOR GRANULAR SOILS

The modified Kovacs (MK) model can be considered as one of the most versatile predictive models available to estimate the unsaturated hydraulic functions. The MK model relies on basic geotechnical properties to obtain the water retention curve (WRC), which can then be used to define the relative permeability function. In addition, the model can also take into consideration hysteresis effects and volume changes. However, the MK model has not yet been introduced in many codes, as most numerical applications needing a mathematical equation to represent the WRC of soils use the Brooks & Corey (BC) (1964) and/or the van Genuchten (vG) (1980) models. To allow for a wider application of the MK model, the authors propose in this paper a direct conversion of MK model parameters to the BC and vG parameters for granular soils taken from the Grizzly soil data base (Haverkamp et al. 1998). The proposed equations were developed using data from 15 granular soils. Results show that BC and vG parameters can be deduced adequately from MK model

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