Water in the soil

Water belongs to many natural and life sciences. It is of interest to water resource managers, chemists, biologists, meteorologists, agricultural soil specialists, ecologists, sailors, etc. Civil engineers, on the other hand, are particularly familiar with water as a component of the soil and for its mechanical interactions with structures.

This article introduces the concepts used to describe the mechanical behavior of water in soils, in particular Darcy's law, the basis for the analysis of water flows in natural porous media; the fundamental equation of permanent flows in soils, its resolution methods and a few examples are studied. Finally, a few notions of hydrogeology useful for civil engineering studies are given.