The continuum approach is a classical framework to describe and understand the soil—water dynamics and the soil effective—stress state in unsaturated soils. This approach is robustly rooted in the definition of the soil—water constitutive laws (soil—water retention curve, soil hydraulic conductivity, Kirchhoff potential, etc.). They link the real soil and its model. Advancements along their development and the comprehension of their role stand at the intersection of experimental measurements, mathematical representation and modelling, numerical solutions, theoretical understandings and practical applications.
This session aims at stimulating an interdisciplinary discussion about the state of the art and recent advances about soil—water constitutive laws and soil physical and hydrological properties, in the framework of a continuum approach and contributing to define its limits.
Experimental, theoretical and numerical contributions are encouraged about, but not limited to, (1) scaling of soil—water constitutive laws and their changes in time and space as a consequence of seasonality, climatic changes, anthropogenic changes and pedogenesis; (2) physics of water—repellent soils, and of swelling, dispersive and collapsible soils; (3) constitutive laws for extremely dry conditions and for nearly saturated soils; (4) nonequilibrium and hysteretic behaviours; (5) limits of the Darcian approach in the presence of macroporosity; (6) heat transfer and dispersion; (7) freezing and thawing processes in permafrost; (8) mechanisms of incipient erosion; (9) mathematical functions of constitutive laws and their physical implications; (10) pedotransfer functions and database analysis.
Advancements along those lines will have major implications in many fields, ranging from hydrology, to soil science and soil physics, agriculture and geotechnics.