Reconstruction of electric impedance field of soil with clay anomaly

Abstract

Electrical impedance characterizes the properties of the examined environment when passing through an alternating electric current. The paper is based on the dependence of the course of real and imaginary components of electrical impedance on the humidity of the porous environment. Different soil environments have various water retention capacities under the same hydrometeorological conditions. This hydrophysical characteristic is used in the presented paper to study the inhomogeneity of the porous environment. The contribution is beneficial in that it proposes a method which, based on simple measurements, allows to evaluate the homogeneity of the porous environment. The method is widely used in water management (e.g. determination of failures of sealing cores in earth dams and dams) but also in hydrological survey and monitoring (e.g. determination of volume humidity).