Simulation of realistic soils for 3-D computational models

This paper investigates the problem of simulation of realistic soils for electromagnetic 3-D computational models. The major difficulty is to take into account the heterogeneous nature of real-life soils, which is an aggregate of random and regular structures, due to environmental (climatic conditions, etc.) or human (soil tillage) processes. The developed methodology uses 3-D measurements of pertinent soil parameters, able to describe the heterogeneity of real-life soils. It can be broken down into four main tasks: (a) 3-D measurement of soil parameter(s); (b) characterization of the 3-D spatial distribution of soil parameter(s); (c) simulation of 3-D volumes with the same spatial distribution; and (d) simulation of 3-D soil permittivity maps using electromagnetic mixing model. This methodology is illustrated with the example of soil density measurement, which is evaluated with the use of a motor-driven penetrometer.