A geostatistically based inverse model for three-dimensional variably saturated flow

We present a geostatistically based inverse model for characterizing heterogeneity in parameters of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity for three-dimensional flow. Pressure and moisture content are related to perturbations in hydraulic parameters through cross-covariances, which are calculated to first-order. Sensitivities needed for covariance calculations are derived using the adjoint state sensitivity method. Approximations of the conditional mean parameter fields are then obtained from the cokriging estimator. Correlation between parameters and pressure – moisture content perturbations is seen to be strongly dependent on mean pressure or moisture content. High correlation between parameters and pressure data was obtained under saturated or near saturated flow conditions, providing accurate estimation of saturated hydraulic conductivity, while moisture content measurements provided accurate estimation of the pore size distribution parameter under unsaturated flow conditions.     

A geostatistically based inverse model for three-dimensional variably saturated flow

We present a geostatistically based inverse model for characterizing heterogeneity in parameters of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity for three-dimensional flow. Pressure and moisture content are related to perturbations in hydraulic parameters through cross-covariances, which are calculated to first-order. Sensitivities needed for covariance calculations are derived using the adjoint state sensitivity method. Approximations of the conditional mean parameter fields are then obtained from the cokriging estimator. Correlation between parameters and pressure – moisture content perturbations is seen to be strongly dependent on mean pressure or moisture content. High correlation between parameters and pressure data was obtained under saturated or near saturated flow conditions, providing accurate estimation of saturated hydraulic conductivity, while moisture content measurements provided accurate estimation of the pore size distribution parameter under unsaturated flow conditions.     

Correction of the Buckingham–Darcy Law for flow of high strength salts in variably saturated porous media

The Buckingham–Darcy Law is used to describe fluid flow in unsaturated porous media at low Reynolds number. In order to provide a priori corrections to this law, a process thermodynamic approach is utilized to ascertain the functional dependence. Using this knowledge, corrections to the hydraulic conductivity coefficient are proposed and compared with available data. The proposed corrections substantially predict the observed behavior of flow of high concentration (saturated) sodium chloride solutions in porous media. During the derivation, physical principles consistent with the thermodynamics of the system were utilized. A review of these principles and their results provides an alternative form of the generalized Gibbs–Duhem Relation for continuous processes, indicating that the identical equivalence to zero is unlikely to occur for dissipative processes. Further, the postulated Gibbs and Gibbs–Duhem Relations indicate that special differential operators need to be used for continuous processes rather than the usual use of a generic differential.     

Effective parameters for flow in saturated heterogeneous porous media

Effective parameters for flow in saturated porous media are obtained via Taylor-Aris-Brenner moment analysis considering both periodic as well as stationary porous medium properties. It is assumed that a slug is instantaneously introduced into an unbounded, anisotropic porous medium having a compressible matrix, and that the correlation length of the local hydraulic conductivity and specific storage fluctuations is smaller than the correlation length of hydraulic head fluctuations (gradually varying flow). It is shown that the effective specific storage is equal to its volume average. The effective hydraulic conductivity is derived by a small-perturbation analysis and it is shown to consist of its volume average and of a second term which accounts for the ‘small’ local conductivity fluctuations.     

Turbulent flow through porous media

The pressure driving flow through porous media must be equal to the viscous resistance plus the inertial resistance. Formulas are developed for both the viscous resistance and the inertial resistance. The expression for the coefficient of permeability consists of parameters which describe the characteristics of the porous medium and the permeating fluid and which, for unconsolidated isotropic granular media, are all measurable. A procedure is proposed for testing for the occurrence of turbulence and calculating the effective permeability when it occurs. The formulas are applied to a set of data from 588 permeameter runs ranging from laminar to highly turbulent. The equations fit the data from the permeameter closely through the laminar flow conditions and quite closely through the turbulent conditions. In the turbulent range, the plotting of the data separates into three distinct lines for each of the three shapes of particles used in the tests. For the porous medium and fluid of these tests, turbulence begins at a head gradient of about 0.1.     

Parameter identification and uncertainty analysis for variably saturated flow

This study investigates variably saturated groundwater flow in the vicinity of a sanitary landfill. A Conjugate gradient method with an objective function that includes both pressure terms and travel time terms is used for parameter identification. The uncertainty in calculated travel time is estimated using both a moment method and a Latin hypercube direct parameter sampling method. The adjoint operator technique is an important component of both the parameter identification procedure and the moment method uncertainty analysis.     

Modeling fluid flow and transport in variably saturated porous media with the STOMP simulator. 2. Verification and validation exercises

STOMP, a subsurface flow and transport simulator for investigating remediation technologies, described in the preceding paper, is tested against simulation results from a published numerical code, MOFAT-2D, and against nonhysteretic and hysteretic data from three-phase flow experiments. There is good agreement between the STOMP and MOFAT-2D simulations and between measured data and numerical results when STOMP is used to simulate the experiments. However, there are some discrepancies between measured and predicted fluid contents. Discrepancies at low fluid contents are assumed to be a function of relative permeability-saturation relations, and discrepancies near complete wetting-fluid saturation are relations, and discrepancies near complete nonwetting-fluid entry pressure in the fluid saturation-pressure relations. Despite the discrepancies, overall predictions of subsurface fluid behavior are good. These results suggest that STOMP may accurately forecast multiphase-flow behavior at a site when the site is adequately characterized and the model parameters are correctly calibrated to the site.     

Analytical approximations for flow in compressible,saturated, one-dimensional porous media

A nonlinear model for single-phase fluid flow in slightly compressible porous media is presented and solved approximately. The model assumes state equations for density, porosity, viscosity and permeability that are exponential functions of the fluid (either gas or liquid) pressure. The governing equation is transformed into a nonlinear diffusion equation. It is solved for a semi-infinite domain for either constant pressure or constant flux boundary conditions at the surface. The solutions obtained, although approximate, are extremely accurate as demonstrated by comparisons with numerical results. Predictions for the surface pressure resulting from a constant flux into a porous medium are compared with published experimental data.     

Simulating a lake as a high-conductivity variably saturated porous medium

One approach for simulating ground water–lake interactions is to incorporate the lake into the ground water solution domain as a high-conductivity region. Previous studies have developed this approach using fully saturated models. This study extends this approach to variably saturated models, so that ground water–lake interactions may be more easily simulated with commonly used or public domain variably saturated codes that do not explicitly support coupled lake–water balance modeling. General guidelines are developed for the choices of saturated hydraulic conductivity and moisture retention and relative permeability curves for the lake region. When applied to an example ground water–lake system, model results are very similar to those from a model in which the lake is represented as a specified head boundary continuously updated by a lake mass balance. The high-conductivity region approach is most suitable for relatively simple geometries and lakes with slower and smaller fluctuations when the overall flow pattern and system fluxes, rather than the detailed flow pattern around the intersection of the lake and land surfaces, are of interest.     

Random maze models of flow through porous media

Summary This paper discusses a class of stochastic models of flow through porous media in which the randomness is attached to the structure of the medium rather than to the flow path. These models are obtained by generalizing an earlier model available in the literature where a regular crystal was taken in which bonds (flow channels) were dammed in a random fashion, yielding a random maze. The hydraulic properties of general models of this type are calculated; in particular, it is shown that they exhibit the phenomenon of dispersion whereby the factor of dispersion turns out to be a linear function of the percolation velocity.     

A generalized Ross method for two- and three-dimensional variably saturated flow

A numerical method has been proposed by Ross [Ross PJ. Modeling soil water and solute transport-fast, simplified numerical solutions. Agron J 2003; 95(6): 1352–1361.] to solve one-dimensional soil water movement problems. The Ross method is a noniterative numerical scheme, that can reduce computational time without sacrificing computational accuracy. The main aim of this study is to present a general form of the Ross method for two- and three-dimensional variably saturated flow. The established numerical model (R3D) is widely tested using five problems, in which the numerical solutions of R3D are compared with analytical solutions, laboratory data, and solutions from a traditional iterative numerical model. The comparison shows that R3D accommodates various hydraulic functions and boundary conditions. Results from R3D, which does not require iteration, are as accurate as results from iterative model. With the help of the primary variable switching technique, this model is unconditionally mass conservative, and computes infiltration into dry soil more efficiently. R3D is thus considered as an efficient tool for its high accuracy and efficiency for solving two- and three-dimensional variably saturated flow problems.     

Grid refinement for modeling multiphase flow in discretely fractured porous media

A study of the effects of grid discretization on the migration of DNAPL within a discrete-fracture network embedded in a porous rock matrix is presented. It is shown that an insufficiently fine discretization of the fracture elements can lead to an overprediction of the volume of DNAPL that continues to migrate vertically at the intersection of a vertical and horizontal fracture. Uniform discretization of elements at the scale of one centimetre (or less) accurately resolved the density and capillary pressure components of the head gradient in the DNAPL. An alternative, non-uniform method of discretization of elements within the discrete-fracture network is presented whereby only fracture elements immediately adjacent to fracture intersections are refined. To further limit the number of elements employed, the porous matrix elements adjacent to the fracture elements are not similarly refined. Results show this alternative method of discretization reduces the numerical error to an acceptable level, while allowing the simulation of field-scale DNAPL contamination problems. The results from two field-scale simulations of a DNAPL-contaminated carbonate bedrock site in Ontario, Canada are presented. These simulations compare different methods of grid discretization, and highlight the importance of grid refinement when simulating DNAPL migration problems in fractured porous media.     

Role of chemotaxis in the transport of bacteria through saturated porous media

Populations of chemotactic bacteria are able to sense and respond to chemical gradients in their surroundings and direct their migration toward increasing concentrations of chemicals that they perceive to be beneficial to their survival. It has been suggested that this phenomenon may facilitate bioremediation processes by bringing bacteria into closer proximity to the chemical contaminants that they degrade. To determine the significance of chemotaxis in these processes it is necessary to quantify the magnitude of the response and compare it to other groundwater processes that affect the fate and transport of bacteria. We present a systematic approach toward quantifying the chemotactic response of bacteria in laboratory scale experiments by starting with simple, well-defined systems and gradually increasing their complexity. Swimming properties of individual cells were assessed from trajectories recorded by a tracking microscope. These properties were used to calculate motility and chemotaxis coefficients of bacterial populations in bulk aqueous media which were compared to experimental results of diffusion studies. Then effective values of motility and chemotaxis coefficients in single pores, pore networks and packed columns were analyzed. These were used to estimate the magnitude of the chemotactic response in porous media and to compare with dispersion coefficients reported in the field. This represents a compilation of many studies over a number of years. While there are certainly limitations with this approach for ultimately quantifying motility and chemotaxis in granular aquifer media, it does provide insight into what order of magnitude responses are possible and which characteristics of the bacteria and media are expected to be important.     

Finite element analysis of water flow in variably saturated soil

A two-dimensional Galerkin finite element model for water flow in variably saturated soil is presented. A fourth-order Runge-Kutta time integration method is employed which allows use of time steps at least 2 times greater than for a traditional finite difference approximation of time derivatives. For short total simulation times computer execution costs for the Runge-Kutta method are greater than for the finite difference approximation due to the start up cost of the Runge-Kutta method, but for longer simulation times the Runge-Kutta method requires considerably less computational effort even when automatic time-step adjustment is used with the finite difference procedure. A comparison of the method of influence coefficients and 2 × 2 Gaussian integration to compute element matrices indicates that the influence coefficient method reduces total execution time to 60% of that required for numerical quadrature. Computed pressure heads using the influence coefficient method and numerical integration are found to be in close agreement with each other even under conditions of highly non-linear soil properties in a heterogeneous domain. Fluxes computed by the two methods are also generally in close agreement except under extremely non-linear conditions when some deviations were observed at short simulation times.     

流体饱和多孔介质黏弹性动力人工边界

基于Biot流体饱和多孔介质本构方程，采用平面波和远场散射波经验叠加来反映外行波传播，以经验参数反映人工边界外行波动的衰减和多角度透射特性。在人工边界处分别施加反映固相和液相介质传播效应的弹簧及阻尼来模拟人工边界以外的无限域介质对来自有限域的外行波的能量的吸收作用。从而形成一种流体饱和多孔介质的黏弹性动力人工边界。数值算例表明：边界的精度和稳定性高于现有的黏性边界、黏弹性人工边界及一阶透射边界。     

Transport and fate of nonaqueous phase liquid (NAPL) in variably saturated porous media with evolving scales of heterogeneity

 A stochastic simulation is performed to study multiphase flow and contaminant transport in fractal porous media with evolving scales of heterogeneity. Numerical simulations of residual NAPL mass transfer and subsequent transport of dissolved and/or volatilized NAPL mass in variably saturated media are carried out in conjunction with Monte Carlo techniques. The impact of fractal dimension, plume scale and anisotropy (stratification) of fractal media on relative dispersivities is investigated and discussed. The results indicate the significance of evolving scale of porous media heterogeneity to the NAPL transport in the subsurface. In general, the fractal porous media enhance the dispersivities of NAPL mass plume transport in both the water phase and the gas phase while the influence on the water phase is more significant. The porous media with larger fractal dimension have larger relative dispersivities. The aqueous horizontal dispersivity exhibits a most significant increase against the plume scale.     

Miscible flow through porous media with dispersion and adsorption

The partial differential nonlinear equation which describes the one-dimensional flow of miscible fluids through porous media with dispersion and Langmuir equilibrium adsorption is numerically solved by finite differences.Local truncation error is determined and von Neumann stability analysis is applied. In order to eliminate either numerical dispersion or unstability, weighting parameters and distance and time increments are conveniently adjusted.Finite differences results are verified with the exact solution for the linear adsorption case. They are obtained for different boundary conditions, whose influence is discussed.Numerical solutions are matched with experimental results from Szabo's¹ polymer flooding tests. Differences between numerical and experimental results are minimized applying optimization techniques to obtain the most suitable physical parameters.