Equivalence of bicontinuum and second-order transport in heterogeneous soils and aquifers

• Published in: Water resources research 2000-12, Vol.36 (12), p.3427-3446
• Main Authors: Montas, Hubert J., Shirmohammadi, Adel, Haghighi, Kamyar, Engel, Bernie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0043-1397; 1944-7973
• DOI: 10.1029/2000WR900251

The mathematical equivalence of a closed second‐order transport equation for reactive solutes in saturated heterogeneous porous media (e.g., soils and aquifers) and a two‐region, mobile‐mobile, formulation is demonstrated in two ways: (1) by averaging the bicontinuum equations and (2) by transforming the second‐order equation to canonical form. The derivation of this equivalence is limited to media with heterogeneities in a plane orthogonal to the flow direction which represents a bidirectional generalization of the stratified case. Results indicate how the parameters of the bicontinuum formulation can be obtained from statistical descriptions of this heterogeneity and establish a stochastic interpretation for the bicontinuum equations. One‐dimensional analytical solutions of the equivalent transport equations are compared to a three‐dimensional numerical simulation of transport in a spatially autocorrelated lognormal random conductivity field. Results indicate that the upscaled equations provide good approximations of the dynamics of the mean resident concentration, the flux‐averaged concentration, and their variances.