[Objective]Layered soil is more often encountered than homogeneous soil in nature, and its water movement follows a law different from the latter’s. And infiltration of water, such as atmospheric precipitation and irrigation water, is an important part of the hydrological process in soil, and is also closely related to groundwater replenishment and pollutant transport. Soil initial water content, soil texture and structure and water supply intensity are all factors affecting the process of water infiltration. The purpose of this study is to explore and grasp law of the water infiltration in layered soil and mechanisms of the influencing factors, and provide a theoretical basis for further rationalization of farmland irrigation measures.[Method]The layered soil used in this research, was constructed in line with the soil profile in the field, i.e. a silt loam layer (18cm thick) and a sandy loam layer (24 cm), and out of the consideration of the mechanisms of ponding water relative to depth, soil configuration and initial soil moisture content affecting water transport. In the indoor ponding infiltration experiment of layered soil, wetting front, cumulative infiltration and soil profile pressure head, relative to depth of standing water, was observed. Moreover, hydraulic parameters of the layered soil were determined with a Ku-pF device and the Hydrus-1D software inversion module, separately. Based on these parameters, the Hydrus-1D model was used to simulate and predict water transport under various set conditions. Applicabilities of the soil hydraulic parameters were verified by comparing the simulated data of the two sets of parameters.[Result]Results show that the wetting front turned from nonlinear advance to linear advance and the cumulative infiltration increased with time, while the infiltration rate decreased rapidly in the early stage of the infiltration and then slowly as the infiltration going on, which is mainly due to the change in soil matrix potential gradient. The soil was relatively dry and high in water suction at the initial stage of the infiltration; as the soil increased in water content, the water suction decreased. As affected by the three factors, water transport varied sharply in characteristics in the layered soil. When the ponding water increased in depth and the initial soil water increased in content, both the wetting front advancing rate and the infiltration rate increased, and the pressure water head increased quicklyat each observation point and the soil water unsaturation degree decreased, which indicates that the change in depth of ponding depth has some impact on pressure potential, and the change in initial water content is related to matrix potential and disintegration and compression of soil aggregates. Compared with the soil configuration of silt loam overlying sandy loam, the one of the reverse order was higher in overall wetting front advancing rate, infiltration rate and pressure head variation. (The infiltration rate at the interface of the wetting front in the layered soil was 0.20 and 0.021 cm•min-1, respectively.) In addition, the two types of layered soils differed significantly in variation of the pressure water head in the soil water redistribution process.[Conclusion]All the findings in this study not only help illustrate that appropriate adjustment of the three influencing factors can reduce soil leakage and optimize soil water management in the field, but also further demonstrate that the parameters of the inversions are more adoptable to simulation and prediction of water infiltration characteristics of layered soils under ponding water in indoor experiments.