Simplified characteristic time method for accurate estimation of the soil hydraulic parameters from one‐dimensional infiltration experiments

Recently, a novel approach with excellent performance based on the concept of characteristic infiltration time, time method (CTM), is proposed to infer soil sorptivity (S) and saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) from one-dimensional (1D) cumulative infiltration. The current work provides simplified version CTM, called SCTM, by eliminating necessity iteration used in CTM providing similar accuracy as original when estimating S Ks. We both synthetic experimental data evaluate SCTM comparison well Sharma (SH) curve-fitting methods. In case synthetically simulated experiments, predicted Ks values showed an agreement their theoretical values, Nash–Sutcliffe (E) higher than 0.9 RMSE 0.11 cm h1/2 0.35 h–1, respectively. data, E larger 0.73 0.64 robustness was comparable applied curves data. Similar also does not require knowledge validity, which needed using approaches Philip's theory. applicable infiltrations durations 15 min 24 h. supplemental material presents calculation Excel spreadsheet.