Stochastic analysis of three-dimensional hydraulic conductivity upscaling in a heterogeneous tropical soil

Hydraulic conductivity (K) heterogeneity is seldom considered in geotechnical practice for the impossibility of sampling the entire area of interest and for the difficulty of accounting for scale effects. Stochastic three-dimensional K upscaling can tackle these two problems, and a workflow is described with an application in a tropical soil. The application shows that K heterogeneity can be incorporated in the daily practice of the geotechnical modeler while discussing the aspects to consider when performing the upscaling so that the upscaled models reproduce the average fluxes at the fine scale.