Technical NoteInvestigation of flow and solute transport at the field scale through heterogeneous deformable porous media

- The field-scale transport in non-stationary flow fields is investigated stochastically.
- The flow field is induced vertically by a change in total stress applied on the aquifer.
- The influence of the soil compressibility on the flow field and transport is analyzed.

SummaryThis work describes an investigation of the spatial statistical structure of specific discharge field and solute transport process of a nonreactive solute at the field scale through a heterogeneous deformable porous medium. The flow field is driven by a vertical gradient in the excess pore water pressure induced by a step increase in load applied on the upper part of a finite-thickness aquifer. The non-stationary spectral representation is adopted to characterize the spatial covariance of the specific discharge field necessary for the development of the solute particle trajectory statistics using the Lagrangian formalism. We show that the statistics of the specific discharge and particle trajectory derived herein are non-stationary and functions of the coefficient of soil compressibility, μ. The effect of μ on the relative variation of specific discharge and the solute particle trajectory statistics are analyzed upon evaluating our expressions.