UNIT 13 -- INTRODUCTION TO CONTAMINANT TRANSPORT MODELING:
As in previous units, I assume that your are familiar with the fundamentals of contaminant transport from previous ground-water courses, and that now, the issue is how to represent the process numerically. However, if you would like a brief review of subsurface contaminant transport and simple analytical solutions, then revisit Unit 5.

Unlike the ground-water flow equations, one term of the advection-dispersion equation includes a first partial derivative while the other includes a second partial derivative.



Mathematicians refer to the character of the dispersion term as parabolic, while the advection term is hyperbolic. This leads to difficulty in obtaining a numerical solution

The OBJECTIVE of UNIT 13 is for you to:

* BECOME FAMILIAR with ALTERNATIVE METHODS for SOLVING the ADVECTION-DISPERSION EQUATION

* BECOME AWARE of the SPECIFIC ITEMS that must be CONSIDERED for TRANSPORT MODELING

DISCUSSION

The hyperbolic form of the partial differential equation describing the advection-dispersion process known as the ADE (Advection Dispersion Equation) makes it difficult to accurately simulate the advection-dispersion process.

NUMERICAL METHODS FOR CONTAMINANT TRANSPORT

EXERCISES

If you chose to purchase Applied Contaminant Transport Modeling,

read Chapter 6
read the pages that mention automated calibration: 208 and 273-287.

If you chose to purchase Applied Ground-water Modeling,

read Chapters 11 and 12

If you chose to purchase Introduction to Ground-water Modeling,

read Chapter 8

Read about methods for solving the ADE in the MT3D manual which can be down loaded from http://hydro.geo.ua.edu/ under MT3D Resources.

COMMUNICATION

Please bring up any questions you may have about regarding contaminant transport modeling. epoeter@mines.edu



ON TO LESSON 14

BACK TO LESSON LIST

BACK TO MAIN PAGE