Hydraulic-Head Formulation for Density-Dependent Flow and Transport

Density-dependent flow and transport solutions for coastal saltwater intrusion investigations, analyses of fluid injection into deep brines, and studies of convective fingering and instabilities of denser fluids moving through less dense fluids typically formulate the groundwater flow equation in terms of pressure or equivalent freshwater head. A formulation of the flow equation in terms of hydraulic head is presented here as an alternative. The hydraulic-head formulation can facilitate adaptation of existing constant-density groundwater flow codes to include density-driven flow by avoiding the need to convert between freshwater head and hydraulic head within the code and by incorporating density-dependent terms as a compartmentalized “correction” to constant-density calculations already performed by the code. The hydraulic-head formulation also accommodates complexities such as unconfined groundwater flow and Newton-Raphson solution schemes more readily than the freshwater-head formulation. Simulation results are presented for four example problems solved using an implementation of the hydraulic-head formulation in MODFLOW.