Water content or moisture content is the quantity of water contained in a material, such as soil (called soil moisture), rock, ceramics, crops, or wood. Water content is used in a wide range of scientific and technical areas, and is expressed as a ratio, which can range from 0 (completely dry) to the value of the materials' porosity at saturation. It can be given on a volumetric or mass (gravimetric) basis.
Volumetric water content, θ, is defined mathematically as:
\theta=
| Vw | |
| Vwet |
Vw
Vwet=Vs+Vw+Va
Vs
Vw
Va
Gravimetric water content[1] is expressed by mass (weight) as follows:
u=
| mw | |
| ms |
mw
ms
For materials that change in volume with water content, such as coal, the gravimetric water content, u, is expressed in terms of the mass of water per unit mass of the moist specimen (before drying):
u'=
| mw | |
| mwet |
u''=
| mw | |
| mdry |
And in food science, both
u'
u''
Values are often expressed as a percentage, i.e. u×100%.
SG
\theta=u x SG
In soil mechanics and petroleum engineering the water saturation or degree of saturation,
Sw
Sw=
| Vw | |
| Vv |
=
| Vw | |
| V\phi |
=
| \theta | |
| \phi |
\phi=Vv/V
Vv
V
The normalized water content,
\Theta
Se
\Theta=
| \theta-\thetar | |
| \thetas-\thetar |
\theta
\thetar
d\theta/dh
\thetas
\phi
Water content can be directly measured using a drying oven.
Gravimetric water content, u, is calculated[4] via the mass of water
mw
mw=mwet-mdry
mwet
mdry
mwet
mdry
On the other hand, volumetric water content, θ, is calculated[5] via the volume of water
Vw
Vw=
| mw | |
| \rhow |
\rhow
Vwet
For wood, the convention is to report moisture content on oven-dry basis (i.e. generally drying sample in an oven set at 105 deg Celsius for 24 hours or until it stops losing weight). In wood drying, this is an important concept.
See main article: Moisture analysis.
Other methods that determine water content of a sample include chemical titrations (for example the Karl Fischer titration), determining mass loss on heating (perhaps in the presence of an inert gas), or after freeze drying. In the food industry the Dean-Stark method is also commonly used.
From the Annual Book of ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) Standards, the total evaporable moisture content in Aggregate (C 566) can be calculated with the formula:
p=
| W-D | |
| W |
p
W
D
In addition to the direct and laboratory methods above, the following options are available.
There are several geophysical methods available that can approximate in situ soil water content. These methods include: time-domain reflectometry (TDR), neutron probe, frequency domain sensor, capacitance probe, amplitude domain reflectometry, electrical resistivity tomography, ground penetrating radar (GPR), and others that are sensitive to the physical properties of water .[6] Geophysical sensors are often used to monitor soil moisture continuously in agricultural and scientific applications.
Satellite microwave remote sensing is used to estimate soil moisture based on the large contrast between the dielectric properties of wet and dry soil. The microwave radiation is not sensitive to atmospheric variables, and can penetrate through clouds. Also, microwave signal can penetrate, to a certain extent, the vegetation canopy and retrieve information from ground surface.[7] The data from microwave remote sensing satellites such as WindSat, AMSR-E, RADARSAT, ERS-1-2, Metop/ASCAT, and SMAP are used to estimate surface soil moisture.[8]
Two primary methods exist to measure the moisture content of wood: oven-dry testing and use of an electronic moisture meter.
The oven-dry method requires drying a wood sample in a special oven or kiln and checking the sample weight at regular time intervals. When the drying process is complete, the sample’s weight is compared to its weight before drying, and the difference is used to calculate the wood’s original moisture content.
Pin and pinless meters are the two main types of moisture meters.
Pin meters require driving two pins into the surface of the wood while making sure that the pins are aligned with the grain and not perpendicular to it. Pin meters provide moisture content readings by measuring the resistance in the electrical current between the two pins. The drier the wood, the more resistance to the electrical current, when measuring below the fiber saturation point of wood. Pin meters are generally preferred when there is no flat surface of the wood available to measure
Pinless meters emit an electromagnetic signal into the wood to provide readings of the wood’s moisture content and are generally preferred when damage to the wood's surface is unacceptable or when a high volume of readings or greater ease of use is required.
Moisture may be present as adsorbed moisture at internal surfaces and as capillary condensed water in small pores. At low relative humidities, moisture consists mainly of adsorbed water. At higher relative humidities, liquid water becomes more and more important, depending or not depending on the pore size can also be an influence of volume. In wood-based materials, however, almost all water is adsorbed at humidities below 98% RH.
In biological applications there can also be a distinction between physisorbed water and "free" water — the physisorbed water being that closely associated with and relatively difficult to remove from a biological material. The method used to determine water content may affect whether water present in this form is accounted for. For a better indication of "free" and "bound" water, the water activity of a material should be considered.
Water molecules may also be present in materials closely associated with individual molecules, as "water of crystallization", or as water molecules which are static components of protein structure.
In soil science, hydrology and agricultural sciences, water content has an important role for groundwater recharge, agriculture, and soil chemistry. Many recent scientific research efforts have aimed toward a predictive-understanding of water content over space and time. Observations have revealed generally that spatial variance in water content tends to increase as overall wetness increases in semiarid regions, to decrease as overall wetness increases in humid regions, and to peak under intermediate wetness conditions in temperate regions .[9]
There are four standard water contents that are routinely measured and used, which are described in the following table:
| Name | Notation | Suction pressure (J/kg or kPa) | Typical water content (vol/vol) | Conditions | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saturated water content | θs | 0 | 0.2–0.5 | Fully saturated soil, equivalent to effective porosity | |
| Field capacity | θfc | −33 | 0.1–0.35 | Soil moisture 2–3 days after a rain or irrigation | |
| Permanent wilting point | θpwp or θwp | −1500 | 0.01–0.25 | Minimum soil moisture at which a plant wilts | |
| Residual water content | θr | −∞ | 0.001–0.1 | Remaining water at high tension |
And lastly the available water content, θa, which is equivalent to:
θa ≡ θfc − θpwpwhich can range between 0.1 in gravel and 0.3 in peat.
When a soil becomes too dry, plant transpiration drops because the water is increasingly bound to the soil particles by suction. Below the wilting point plants are no longer able to extract water. At this point they wilt and cease transpiring altogether. Conditions where soil is too dry to maintain reliable plant growth is referred to as agricultural drought, and is a particular focus of irrigation management. Such conditions are common in arid and semi-arid environments.
Some agriculture professionals are beginning to use environmental measurements such as soil moisture to schedule irrigation. This method is referred to as smart irrigation or soil cultivation.[10]
In saturated groundwater aquifers, all available pore spaces are filled with water (volumetric water content = porosity). Above a capillary fringe, pore spaces have air in them too.
Most soils have a water content less than porosity, which is the definition of unsaturated conditions, and they make up the subject of vadose zone hydrogeology. The capillary fringe of the water table is the dividing line between saturated and unsaturated conditions. Water content in the capillary fringe decreases with increasing distance above the phreatic surface. The flow of water through and unsaturated zone in soils often involves a process of fingering, resulting from Saffman–Taylor instability. This results mostly through drainage processes and produces and unstable interface between saturated and unsaturated regions.
One of the main complications which arises in studying the vadose zone, is the fact that the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity is a function of the water content of the material. As a material dries out, the connected wet pathways through the media become smaller, the hydraulic conductivity decreasing with lower water content in a very non-linear fashion.
A water retention curve is the relationship between volumetric water content and the water potential of the porous medium. It is characteristic for different types of porous medium. Due to hysteresis, different wetting and drying curves may be distinguished.
Generally, an aggregate has four different moisture conditions. They are Oven-dry (OD), Air-dry (AD), Saturated surface dry (SSD) and damp (or wet).[11] Oven-dry and Saturated surface dry can be achieved by experiments in laboratories, while Air-dry and damp (or wet) are aggregates' common conditions in nature.
The water adsorption by mass (Am) is defined in terms of the mass of saturated-surface-dry (Mssd) sample and the mass of oven dried test sample (Mdry) by the formula:
A=
| Mssd-Mdry | |
| Mdry |
Among these four moisture condition of aggregates, saturated surface dry is the condition that has the most applications in laboratory experiments, researches and studies, especially these related to water absorption, composition ratio or shrinkage test in materials like concrete. For many related experiments, a saturated surface dry condition is a premise that must be realize before the experiment. In saturated surface dry condition, the aggregate's water content is in a relatively stable and static situation where it would not be affected by its environment. Therefore, in experiments and tests where aggregates are in saturated surface dry condition, there would be fewer disrupting factors than in other three conditions.[14] [15]