Unsaturated hydraulic conductivity is a primary soil parameter required when performing seepage analyses for unsaturated soil. The measurement of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity is normally time-consuming and limited in a narrow range. Wetting front advancing method is newly developed for a rapid measurement of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity. It is capable to measure the hydraulic conductivity function in one week and over a wide suction and permeability range. In this paper

the accuracy of this method is investigated through numerical test. The results demonstrate that the soil hydraulic conductivity curve (SHCC) calculated by wetting front advancing method can agree with the “real” SHCC perfectly

i.e. the input PF. The instantaneous profile method is also used to calculate SHCC in the numerical test. The results indicate that the difference between the result data and the input SHCC increase with the increase of monitoring section space. A monitoring section space of 20 mm can result in a SHCC

which still worse than the data from the wetting front advancing method.