Nonlinear infiltration with a singular diffusion coefficient

Abstract

This paper deals with the study of the nonlinear boundary-value problem with initial data, modelling incompressible water infiltration into a homogeneous, isotropic, unsaturated soil, for nonhomogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions. For some well-known hydraulic models, Richards' equation that describes the evolution of the volumetric water content has the particularity that the diffusion coefficient blows up at a certain value of the soil moisture. In this paper, for a problem of this type, a result of existence and uniqueness of the solution is proved for the unsaturated flow, and its properties are deduced. Conditions under which saturation occurrence is possible are finally discussed.