The influence of capillary fringe on flow characteristics in seepage models of earth dams has been investigated herein., using three types of standard sands. The two main objectives of this paper are (a) the study of the flow pattern in its various aspects and (6) the development of a new technique of model experiments in which scale models have been evolved to simulate capillary effects to scale. The necessary analytical background to understand the phenomenon of partially saturated flow has been presented, to enable one to distinguish between the characteristics of saturated flow and partially saturated flow. The conclusions drawn from the present analysis and experimental results have been briefly summarised at the end of this paper.
