A simple method of determining the soil-water charactistic curve indirectly

Based on the results of mercury intrusion porosimeter (MIP) test and shrinkage test of soil, the relationship between the water content and pore volume, pore size distribution of the tested samples during the drying process is obtained. A simple method of determining the soil-water characteristic curve indirectly is presented by MIP test for freeze-drying specimen and shrinkage test under the condition of the initial water content, in which the capillary model is employed. Several typical empirical equations for the soil-water characteristic curve can be derived by the given general formula in this paper. The validity of the proposed general formula is also preliminarily proved by the laboratory test.