HR: 10:20h
AN: H12A-01    [Abstracts]
TI: Simulation of Solute Flow and Transport in a Geostatistically Generated Fractured Porous System
AU: * Assteerawatt, A
EM: nui@iws.uni-stuttgatr.de
AF: University Stuttgart, Institute for Hydraulic Engineering, Stuttgart, 70569, Germany
AU: Helmig, R
EM: rainer.helmig@iws.uni-stuttgatr.de
AF: University Stuttgart, Institute for Hydraulic Engineering, Stuttgart, 70569, Germany
AU: Haegland, H
EM: hakonh@mi.uib.no
AF: University of Bergen, Department of Mathematics, Bergen, 5008, Norway
AU: Bárdossy, A
EM: andras.bardossy@iws.uni-stuttgart.de
AF: University Stuttgart, Institute for Hydraulic Engineering, Stuttgart, 70569, Germany
AB: Fractured aquifer systems have provided important natural resources such as petroleum, gas, water and geothermal energy and have also been recently under investigation for their suitability as storage sites for high-level nuclear waste. The resource exploitation and potential utilization have led to extensive studies aiming of understanding, characterizing and finally predicting the behavior of fractured aquifer systems. By applying a discrete model approach to study flow and transport processes, fractures are determined discretely and the effect of individual fractures can be explicitly investigated. The critical step for the discrete model is the generation of a representative fracture network since the development of flow paths within a fractured system strongly depends on its structure. The geostatistical fracture generation (GFG) developed in this study aims to create a representative fracture network, which combines the spatial structures and connectivity of a fracture network, and the statistical distribution of fracture geometries. The spatial characteristics are characterized from indicator fields, which are evaluated from fracture trace maps. A global optimization, Simulated annealing, is utilized as a generation technique and the spatial characteristics are formulated to its objective function. We apply the GFG to a case study at a Pliezhausen field block, which is a sandstone of a high fracture density. The generated fracture network from the GFG are compared with the statistically generated fracture network in term of structure and hydraulic behavior. As the GFG is based on a stochastic concept, several realizations of the same descriptions can be generated, hence, an overall behavior of the fracture-matrix system have to be investigated from various realizations which leads to a problem of computational demand. In order to overcome this problem, a streamline method for a solute transport in a fracture porous system is presented. The results obtained from the streamline simulation and from solving the transport equation are collated.
DE: 1829 Groundwater hydrology
DE: 1847 Modeling
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting