Influence of heterogeneous air entry pressure on large scale unsaturated flow in porous media

The paper presents numerical simulations of water infiltration in unsaturated porous media containing coarse-textured inclusions embedded in fine-textured background material. The calculations are performed using the two-phase model for water and air flow and a simplified model known as the Richards...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Acta geophysica 2014-10, Vol.62 (5), p.1179-1191
Main Authors: Szymkiewicz, Adam, Neuweiler, Insa, Helmig, Rainer
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
air entry pressure
Air flow
Civil engineering
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Environmental engineering
Geophysics
Geophysics/Geodesy
Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences
Heterogeneity
heterogeneous media
Infiltration
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical models
Media
Porosity
Porous media
Simulation
Structural Geology
two-phase flow
Unsaturated
Unsaturated flow
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Summary:The paper presents numerical simulations of water infiltration in unsaturated porous media containing coarse-textured inclusions embedded in fine-textured background material. The calculations are performed using the two-phase model for water and air flow and a simplified model known as the Richards equation. It is shown that the Richards equation cannot correctly describe flow in the presence of heterogeneities. However, its performance can be improved by introducing appropriately defined effective capillary and permeability functions, representing largescale behaviour of the heterogeneous medium.
ISSN:1895-6572
1895-7455
DOI:10.2478/s11600-014-0224-7