Abstract: Soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC) was fitted by Gardner’s model, Van Genuchten’s model, and Fredlund & Xing’s model to find that in addition to the correlation coefficient R² (0.940, 0.949, 0.953) fitted by Gardner’s model when dry density equals 1.5 g/cm³, 1.6 g/cm³, and 1.71 g/cm³, the correlation coefficients fitted by other models all exceed 0.96, indicating a good fitting effect. The parameters in Gardner’s model and Van Genuchten’s are of good correlation with dry density. On this basis, a simplified method for determining the model parameters according to dry density is proposed to avoid the complex testing process for obtaining the model parameters. The proposed method is practical and is expected to offer reference for engineering.

Key words: soil water characteristic curve, model parameters, dry density, fitting analysis, simplified method