Surface Ground-penetrating Radar monitoring of water infiltration inside a ring infiltrometer

Abstract

In this study, we test the use of a surface Ground-penetrating Radar (GPR) for monitoring the water infiltration using a single ring infiltrometer similar to the Muntz apparatus [1]. We performed an experiment in a natural Fontainebleau sand, with 1600 MHz antennae, using a 60-cm diameter metallic ring partially buried down to 10 cm. During the infiltration of a 5-cm layer of water and the following drainage, GPR traces are acquired every 5 s from a static position inside the ring. We performed gravimetric measurements on several soil samples, evaluated the retention curve function using a laboratory hanging water column and used hydrodynamical and electromagnetic simulations to help with the GPR data interpretation.