Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport

SOLVED WITH COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS 3.5a

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Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport

Introduction
This model demonstrates the application of COMSOL Multiphysics to a benchmark case of steady-state subsurface fluid flow and transient solute transport along a vertical cross section in an unconfined aquifer. Because of profound geologic heterogeneity, the model must estimate solute transport subject to highly irregular flow conditions with strong anisotropic dispersion. Van der Heijde (Ref. 1) classifies this case as Level 2, with enough potentially difficult parameter combinations to test a codes ability to tackle realistic hydrologic situations. Sudicky (Ref. 2) developed this problem to demonstrate a Laplace transform Galerkin code. This problem subsequently has been used to evaluate other flow and transport models, including MT3DMS by Zheng and Wang (Ref. 3). This model makes use of several useful COMSOL Multiphysics features: Multiphysics coupling between fluid flow and solute transport Freely defined equations using the PDE, Coefficient Form application mode Upper boundary is water table with time-dependent solute source Incorporation of subsurface geological heterogeneity Customized expressions used to create anisotropic dispersion tensor

Model Definition
The hydrologic setting for this problem is described in Figure 1 (a) (see Ref. 2), for groundwater flow at steady state. The aquifer is composed largely of fine-grained silty sand of hydraulic conductivity K1 = 5104 cm/s, equivalent to K1 = 5106 m/s, with lenses of relatively course material of hydraulic conductivity K2 = 1102 cm/s, equivalent to K2 = 1104 m/s. Generally, groundwater moves from the upper surface of the saturated zone, the water table, to the outlet at x = 250 m. The water table is a free surface, that is, fluid pressure equals zero, across which there is vertical recharge, denoted by R, of 10 cm/yr equivalent to 3.215109 m/s. The groundwater divide, a line of symmetry, occurs at x = 0. The base of the aquifer is impermeable.

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Figure 1 (b) shows conditions related to solute transport. The aquifer initially is pristine, and concentrations equal zero. For the first five years, a relative concentration of 1.0 is loaded over the interval 40 m < x < 80 m at the water table. The solute source is removed in year 5, and the concentration along this segment immediately drops to zero. The contaminant migrates within the aquifer via advection and dispersion. Throughout the domain, porosity, denoted by n, is 0.35, the longitudinal dispersivity, L, and transverse vertical dispersivity, T, are 0.5 m and 0.005 m, respectively, and the effective molecular diffusion coefficient, Dm, is 1.34105 cm2/s, equivalent to 1.34109 m2/s.
(a)

(b)

Figure 1: Definition of the flow-field problem (a) and the transport-of-solute problem (b).
FLUID FLOW: DOMAIN EQUATIONS AND BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

Governing equations for fluid flow and solute transport were specified in separate PDE, Coefficient Form application modes in COMSOL Multiphysics. Steady groundwater flow generally is expressed with a conservation equation built with Darcys law (Ref. 4, Ref. 5):

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 ( K h ) + R = 0 where K is hydraulic conductivity (L/T); xi is spatial distance in direction i (L); R is the volumetric rate of recharge to water table per unit volume of aquifer (T1), and the dependent variable h is hydraulic head (L). Hydraulic head, a function of pressure and gravitational potential, is defined h = hp + y (1)

where hp is pressure head (L); and y is elevation (L). Equation 1 states the driving force for groundwater flow at field scales is h. For any given water particle, h equals the height of the water column hp above the particle plus the particles elevation y. It should be pointed out here that y is the name assigned to the independent variable xi for the vertical direction. The equations for groundwater flow and solute transport are linked by the average linear velocity v, or seepage velocity: K h vi = --n xi (2)

where n is porosity (L3/L3), or the fraction of the aquifer containing water. n appears in the denominator of Equation 2 because only a portion of a given aquifer block is available for flow. The boundary conditions for the groundwater flow problem are shown in Figure 1 (a) and stated below. A zero flux Neumann condition represents the symmetry boundary at x = 0 m and the impermeable boundary at y = 0 m as follows: h x =
x=0

h y

= 0
y=0

Hydraulic head is specified at x = 250 m with a Dirichlet condition: h ( x, t ) = h 0 Representing the water table is slightly more complicated. A Neumann boundary is used to model the known recharge: K h = R y

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Specifying that this flux is entirely vertical requires multiplication by the y component of the normal vector n in COMSOL Multiphysics. An important advantage of specifying a flux condition on the water table is the opportunity to fine tune the model setup. If the flow problem is well posed, h naturally equals y at the water table, because hp is zero (that is, atmospheric pressure) at a free surface. In this model, the water table geometry is first determined by educated guess and is fine tuned manually in successive simulations until there is a good match between elevations and hydraulic head predictions on the boundary (Ref. 2).
S O L U T E TR A N S P O R T : D O M A I N E Q U A T I O N S , B O U N D A R Y C O N D I T I O N S , AND INITIAL CONDITIONS

Solute transport typically is time dependent for geologic problems and is described with the advection-dispersion equation (Ref. 4, Ref. 5): C C D + vi C = x i ij x j t where Dij is the hydrodynamic dispersion tensor (L2/T); C is the dissolved concentration (M/L3); vi is the average linear velocity (defined above); and t is time. The dispersion tensor defines solute spreading by mechanical mixing and molecular diffusion. Equations for the tensor entries are: vi vj D ii = L ----- + T ----- + D v v vi vj D ij = D ji = ( L T ) --------- + D v where Dii are the principal components of the dispersion tensor (L2/T); Dij, Dji are the cross terms of the dispersion tensor (L2/T); the subscript L denotes longitudinal 2 2 dispersivity (L); the subscript T denotes transverse dispersivity (L); v = vx + v y is the magnitude of the velocity vector (L/T); and D* represents effective molecular diffusion Dm in saturated porous media, (L2/T), where D* < Dm << Dii and typically is neglected. The boundary and initial conditions for solute transport, shown in Figure 1 (b), are expressed below. Dirichlet conditions are used at the water table, where C(x,h,t) = 0, except for the segment 40 m < x < 80 m in which
2 2

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 C0 , 0 < t < t0 C = t > t0 0, where the relative concentration C0 is 1.0 through year 5 (t0). After the solute source is removed, the concentration along this segment drops to zero. This model implements the time dependence of the source using a logical expression (a logical and function) in the COMSOL Multiphysics boundary settings. The Dirichlet condition at the left boundary is C ( 0, y, t ) = 0 A Neumann condition is needed for the zero gradient boundaries: h x =
x = 250

h y

= 0
y=0

Finally, the initial condition specifies that the aquifer is pristine, when C ( x, y, 0 ) = 0

Results and Discussion

FLUID FLOW

Figure 2 provides hydraulic heads estimated with the COMSOL Multiphysics steady-state groundwater flow simulation. The hydraulic heads and streamlines shown in Figure 2 correspond nicely to the benchmark results provided by Sudicky (Ref. 2). The slight differences between the two plots are attributable to meshing: the mesh size varies naturally with the geometry. The water table geometry determined for the simulation (see Figure 2) nearly duplicates the benchmark geometry obtained in Ref. 2. The good match between the flow fields is expected because the initial water table geometry used with COMSOL Multiphysics was designed to closely resemble the benchmark geometry. In the simulations reported here, therefore, only nuances of geometry were resolved through iteration. Figure 3 provides residuals from the geometry fitting; that is, the fractional

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difference between h and y along the final water table boundary. As Figure 3 illustrates, the error in the geometry settings is 1% or less.

Figure 2: COMSOL Multiphysics estimates of hydraulic head and flow lines. The solution reproduces the results in Ref. 2.

Figure 3: Fractional error in water table geometry computed using hydraulic head predicted by COMSOL Multiphysics, H, and water table elevation, y.

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S O L U T E TR A N S P O R T

Solute transport solutions from the model are almost identical to the ones presented in Ref. 2. This is clearly shown in the contour intervals for three times in Figure 4. The minor variation between the COMSOL Multiphysics and benchmark solutions results from different mesh densities. In 1989, Sudicky concluded that the results illustrated in Ref. 2 are relatively free of numerical dispersion, as the low concentration contours closely follow the flow pattern. The surface plot for COMSOL also displays this property, in that even the lowest concentrations in Figure 4 still follow the irregular flow lines of Figure 2.

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 4: Plume concentrations calculated with COMSOL Multiphysics at three times: (a) t = 8 years, (b) t = 12 years, and (c) t = 20 years.

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The results from this model show that COMSOL Multiphysics is an effective tool for simulating fluid flow and solute transport in the heterogeneous porous media and highly irregular flow fields that are common to field scale applications.

References
1. P.K.M. van der Heijde, Model Testing: A Functionality Analysis, Performance Evaluation, and Applicability Assessment Protocol, Groundwater Models for Resources Analysis and Management, A.I. El-Kadi (ed.), CRC Press, Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL, pp. 3958, 1995. 2. E.A. Sudicky, The Laplace transform Galerkin technique: application to mass transport in groundwater, Water Resour. Res., vol. 25, no. 8, pp. 18331846, 1989. 3. C. Zheng and P. Wang, MT3DMS: A Modular Three-Dimensional Multispecies Transport Model for Simulation of Advection, Dispersion and Chemical Reactions of Contaminants in Groundwater Systems, University of Alabama, 239 pp, 1998. 4. J. Bear, Dynamics of Fluids in Porous Media, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, 764 pp, 1972. 5. J. Bear, Hydraulics of Groundwater, McGraw-Hill, New York, 210 pp, 1979.

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