Characteristics of unsaturated flow in heterogeneous porous media

The numerical scheme for the dimensionless Richards equation is developed in order to analyzing the unsaturated flow in the heterogeneous porous media. Since there is no general condition for the stability owing to the strong nonlinear property in the governing equation, the mass balance in the heterogeneous soil column is checked. Because the mass balance is calculated by 5%, which is tolerable, the proposed numerical scheme may be efficiently used in analyzing the unsaturated flow in the heterogeneous media.