EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF MACRODISPERSION OF DENSITY-DEPENDENT FLOW AND TRANSPORT IN STOCHASTICALLY HETEROGENEOUS MEDIA

摘要

While the physics of density-independent flow and transport in both homogeneous and heterogeneous media has sufficiently been observed and documented, this is less the case when variable density flow and transport is considered. Although the last decade has seen a wealth of experimental and numerical studies of density-dependent phenomena which occur in many facets in groundwater hydrology such as, for example, (1) seawater intrusion in coastal aquifers; (2) saltwater upconing in formation aquifers; (3) vertical seepage of brackish water from open ocean canals; (4) movement of brine solutions in salt domes that have been targeted as possible nuclear waste repositories; and (5) infiltration of dense aqueous (miscible) or non-aqueous (immiscible) phase liquids, to name a few, many of the governing processes driving density-dependent flow and transport are not well understood, namely in a stochastically heterogeneous porous media.