Abstract
The influence of hydraulic conductivity on the movement of flow and nonreactive solute transport through aquifers was evaluated. Several different log-normal probability distribution functions bounded within a fixed range were adopted for simulating the heterogeneous spatial distribution of hydraulic conductivity. Programming codes for two-dimensional confined aquifers were developed to solve the groundwater flow and solute transport equations for a hypothetical setup. Well capture zones were delineated using capture fractions and calculated the concentration moments. Results indicated that an increased shape parameter leads to more heterogeneity in the hydraulic conductivity field and significantly enhances the non-uniformity in the flow and solute plume movements. The findings were generalized for the continuous, discrete, and mixed zonal models, simulated with different parameter values, to yield a lower and upper range for the model derivatives. The results also described the influence of the connectedness of hydraulic conductivity fields on groundwater flow and transport, using capture fractions and plume moments as connectivity indicators. Hence, capture fractions and plume moment statistics aided the careful characterization of aquifer conductivity as a reasonable method of ranking flow and transport connectivity in aquifer flow and transport processes.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
AFCEE (Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence) (2004) Monitoring and remediation optimization system (MAROS) software version 2.1 users guide. Brooks AFB, Texas
Anderson MP, Woessner WW, Hunt RJ (2015) Applied groundwater modeling: Simulation of flow and advective transport. Academic Press, San Diego
Awad MA, Hassan AE, Bekhit HM (2018) The use of connectivity clusters in stochastic modelling of highly heterogeneous porous media. Arab J Geosci 11:98. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-018-3432-7
Bianchi M, Zheng C, Wilson C, Tick GR, Liu G, Gorelick SM (2011) Spatial connectivity in a highly heterogeneous aquifer: from cores to preferential flow paths. Water Resour Res 47(5):1–18. https://doi.org/10.1029/2009wr008966
Bong T, Son Y (2019) Impact of probability distribution of hydraulic conductivity on groundwater contaminant transport. KSCE J Civ Eng 23(5):1963–1973. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12205-019-0140-0
Carrera J, Alcolea A, Medina A, Hidalgo J, Slooten LJ (2005) Inverse problem in hydrogeology. Hydrogeol J 13(1):206–222. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-004-0404-7
DeCarlo LT (1997) On the meaning and use of kurtosis. Psychol Methods 2(3):292–307. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.2.3.292
Farrell DA, Woodbury AD, Sudicky EA (1994) The 1978 Borden tracer experiment: analysis of the spatial moments. Water Resour Res 30(11):3213–3223. https://doi.org/10.1029/94wr00622
Fernàndez-Garcia D, Trinchero P, Sanchez-Vila X (2010) Conditional stochastic mapping of transport connectivity. Water Resour Res 46:W10515. https://doi.org/10.1029/2009WR008533
Fiorotto V, Caroni E (2002) Solute concentration statistics in heterogeneous aquifers for finite Peclet numbers. Transp Porous Media 48:331–351. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015744421033
Freeze RA (1975) A stochastic-conceptual analysis of one-dimensional groundwater flow in nonuniform homogeneous media. Water Resour Res 11(5):725–741. https://doi.org/10.1029/wr011i005p00725
Jiao J, Zhang Y (2014) Tensor hydraulic conductivity estimation for heterogeneous aquifers under unknown boundary conditions. Groundwater 53(2):293–304. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwat.12202
Konikow LF (1996) Numerical models of groundwater flow and transport. In: Manual on mathematical models in isotope hydrogeology. International Atomic Energy Agency Rept. IAEA-TECDOC-910, Vienna, pp 59–112
Moltyaner GL, Wills CA (1987) Method of moments analysis of the Twin Lake tracer test data. Rep. AECL-9521, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Chalk River, Ontario
Moukalled F, Mangani L, Darwish M (2016) The finite volume method in computational fluid dynamics: an advanced introduction with OpenFOAM® and Matlab®. Springer, Switzerland
Natarajan N, Suresh Kumar G (2018) Spatial moment analysis of multispecies contaminant transport in porous media. Environ Eng Res 23(1):76–83. https://doi.org/10.4491/eer.2016.147
Nowak W, Schwede RL, Cirpka OA, Neuweiler I (2008) Probability density functions of hydraulic head and velocity in three-dimensional heterogeneous porous media. Water Resour Res 44(8):1–15. https://doi.org/10.1029/2007wr006383
Patankar SV (1980) Numerical heat transfer and fluid flow. Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, USA
Potter ST, Moreno-Barbero E, Divine CE (2008) MODALL: a practical tool for designing and optimizing capture systems. Groundwater 46(2):172–173. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6584.2007.00410.x
Renard P, Allard D (2013) Connectivity metrics for subsurface flow and transport. Adv Water Resour 51:168–196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2011.12.001
Renu V, Suresh Kumar G (2014) Temporal moment analysis of solute transport in a coupled fracture-skin- matrix system. Sadhana 39(2):487–509. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12046-014-0240-y
Rizzo CB, de Barros FPJ (2017) Minimum hydraulic resistance and least resistance path in heterogeneous porous media. Water Resour Res 53(10):8596–8613. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017wr020418
Schüler L, Suciu N, Knabner P, Attinger S (2016) A time dependent mixing model to close PDF equations for transport in heterogeneous aquifers. Adv Water Resour 96:55–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2016.06.012
Sharif Ahmadian A (2016) Numerical Models for submerged breakwaters: coastal hydrodynamics and morphodynamics. Butterworth-Heinemann, USA
Srzic V, Andricevic R, Gotovac H, Cvetkovic V (2013a) Collapse of higher-order solute concentration moments in groundwater transport. Water Resour Res 49(8):4751–4764. https://doi.org/10.1002/wrcr.20371
Srzic V, Cvetkovic V, Andricevic R, Gotovac H (2013b) Impact of aquifer heterogeneity structure and local-scale dispersion on solute concentration uncertainty. Water Resour Res 49(6):3712–3728. https://doi.org/10.1002/wrcr.20314
Swathi B, Eldho TI (2017) Aquifer parameter and zonation structure estimation using meshless local Petrov-Galerkin method and particle swarm optimization. J Hydroinf 20(2):457–467. https://doi.org/10.2166/hydro.2017.060
Tyukhova AR, Kinzelbach W, Willmann M (2015) Delineation of connectivity structures in 2-D heterogeneous hydraulic conductivity fields. Water Resour Res 51(7):5846–5854. https://doi.org/10.1002/2014wr015283
Tyukhova AR, Willmann M (2016) Connectivity metrics based on the path of smallest resistance. Adv Water Resour 88:14–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2015.11.014
Varalakshmi V, Venkateswara Rao B, SuriNaidu L, Tejaswini M (2014) Groundwater flow modeling of a hard rock aquifer: case study. J Hydrol Eng 19(5):877–886. https://doi.org/10.1061/(asce)he.1943-5584.0000627
Venkateshan SP, Prasanna S (2014) Computational methods in engineering. Academic Press, USA
Wang K, Huang G (2011) Impact of hydraulic conductivity on solute transport in highly heterogeneous aquifer. IFIP Adv Inf Commun Technol. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18333-1_78
Zinn B, Harvey CF (2003) When good statistical models of aquifer heterogeneity go bad: a comparison of flow, dispersion, and mass transfer in connected and multivariate Gaussian hydraulic conductivity fields. Water Resour Res 39(3):1051. https://doi.org/10.1029/2001WR001146
Acknowledgements
The manuscript does not have any external contributors.
Funding
No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Nitha Ayinippully Nalarajan and Suresh Kumar Govindarajan contributed to conceptualization; Nitha Ayinippully Nalarajan contributed to methodology; Nitha Ayinippully Nalarajan contributed to formal analysis; Nitha Ayinippully Nalarajan contributed to Writing—original draft preparation; Nitha Ayinippully Nalarajan, Suresh Kumar Govindarajan, and Indumathi M Nambi contributed to writing—review & editing; Indumathi M Nambi provided the resources; Suresh Kumar Govindarajan and Indumathi M Nambi contributed to supervision.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the work reported in this article.
Ethical approval
This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any authors.
Additional information
Editorial responsibility: S. R. Sabbagh-Yazdi.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ayinippully Nalarajan, N., Govindarajan, S.K. & Nambi, I.M. Aquifer heterogeneity on well capture zone and solute transport: numerical investigations with spatial moment analysis. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 19, 7261–7274 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03573-y
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03573-y