A BEM for time dependent infiltration from an irrigation channel

In this paper some two dimensional time dependent infiltration problems are considered. The problems involve infiltration from an irrigation channel into a homogenous soil and a soil which contains an impermeable finite inclusion. The problems are reduced to boundary integral equations which may be solved numerically using established procedures. Numerical results are obtained to provide the distribution of the matric flux potential for some particular impermeable inclusions and a particular channel shape. The results indicate how the distance from the channel influences the speed with which the matric flux potential reaches its steady state value. They also illustrate how the presence of an impermeable inclusion can increase the matric flux potential at points below the surface.