HR: 11:05h
AN: H52D-04    [Abstracts]
TI: Impacts of low-conductive zones on transport in highly heterogeneous porous formations
AU: * Jankovic, I
EM: ijankovi@eng.buffalo.edu
AF: University at Buffalo, Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, 231 Jarvis Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260-4400 United States
AU: Fiori, A
EM: aldo@uniroma3.it
AF: Universita di Roma Tre, Dipartimento di Scienze dell' Ingegneria Civile, Via V. Volterra 62, Roma, 00146 Italy
AB: Three-dimensional flow and advective transport of inert solutes in highly heterogeneous isotropic formations are simulated in a numerically laboratory. The medium is made of a homogenous background and inclusions of varying conductivity. The mean, variance and correlation structure of hydraulic conductivity in the model can be adjusted by varying conductivity, size and volume fraction of inclusions to match actual aquifer formations in a statistical sense. The hydraulic conductivity of inclusions in the present study follows a lognormal distribution. The large variances of logconductivity (up to 8) and large domain sizes (over 100 correlation lengths) permit us to investigate large scale transport in highly heterogeneous formations. The present study focuses on impacts on low-conductive zones in the aquifer volume sampled by the plume. The impacts of these zones are investigated by comparing various results obtained with two different injection modes. In the first mode concentration in the injection plane was constant, while in the second mode it varies proportional to local water flux. Various spatial and temporal measures of spread are computed for both modes and used to compare the results. Conclusions of the study are relevant for numerical simulations of flow and transport and, more importantly, in interpretation of field experiments' results.
DE: 1832 Groundwater transport
DE: 1869 Stochastic hydrology
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005