第8章. 粒子追踪

As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea; As many lines close in the dial’s centre; So may a thousand actions, once afoot, End in one purpose, and be all well borne Without defeat.

——Henry V, Act I

Particle tracking (PT) is a postprocessing tool for calculating flowpaths and travel times, both of which may be used as calibration targets (Section 9.3). PT is also used for representing the advective transport of solutes, including contaminants.

8.1 介绍

A particle tracking (PT) code is a postprocessor for a groundwater flow model that calculates the velocity field and tracks the movement of imaginary particles through the model domain. A PT code takes the computed head distribution and hydraulic conductivities from a groundwater flow model and, with the addition of user-specified values of effective porosity (Box 8.1), calculates velocities at nodal points of the grid/mesh (Fig. 8.1).

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Box 8.1 Effective Porosity

Particle tracking (PT) requires values of effective porosity, n, to calculate groundwater velocity (Eqn (8.1)). Effective porosity is a relatively simple concept but is difficult to define quantitatively. Only selected aspects of effective porosity pertinent to PT are discussed in this box.

For additional information, the reader is referred to Zheng and Bennett (2002, pp. 56–57; pp. 16–17) and Stephens et al (1998).

Effective porosity can be qualitatively defined as the ratio of the volume of interconnected pore volume available for flow to the total volume of porous material. Then, by definition, effective porosity is smaller than total porosity, which is the ratio of total pore volume to total volume of porous material. Total porosity can be measured in the laboratory or estimated from grain size analysis (e.g., Frings et al, 2011) and many tabulations are available (e.g., Kresic, 2007, Appendix C, pp. 767–775). Effective porosity can also be measured in the laboratory using column experiments, but conclusions based on experimental results are contradictory and ambiguous. For example, in experiments conducted by van der Kamp et al (1996), values of effective porosity were dependent on the type of tracer. They attributed the differences in measurements to “phenomena such as ion exclusion, enclosed pores, and bound water” (p. 1821).

They also found that in some experiments effective porosity was greater than their measured values of total porosity. In practice, it is customary to use effective porosity to represent both total and effective porosity for all types of porous material rather than define two different porosity values (Zheng and Bennett, p. 57). This assumption is most likely to be valid for sand aquifers.

Ideally, effective porosity (n) is determined from a field tracer test performed at the site being modeled. Then, n is calculated from the following equation:

n=\frac{q}{v}=\frac{KI}{v}\qquad(B8.1.1)

where q is specific discharge, K is hydraulic conductivity, I is hydraulic gradient, and velocity, v, is the ratio of distance to time of travel of the tracer. Gelhar et al (1992) tabulated values of effective porosity estimated from field tracer tests for a variety of aquifers (Table B8.1.1). Values for unconsolidated sediments range from around 0.40 (alluvial sediments; fine sand, and glacial till) to 0.004 (layered medium sand) and from 0.60 (fractured dolomite and limestone) to 0.005 (fractured chalk) for rock.

However, tracer tests are rarely performed in practice. Rather, effective porosity is estimated as some fraction of total porosity, taken from literature values such as those in Table B8.1.1, or estimated during model calibration. In applied groundwater modeling, effective porosity is typically best described as the number required to achieve agreement with observations of travel times (Zheng and Bennett, 2002, p. 17).

Unconsolidated material	Effective porosity
Gravel with cobbles	0.22
Gravel	0.17
Gravel,sand,and silt	0.38
Very heterogenous sand and gravel	0.35
Glaciofluvial sand and gravel (2 different tests)	0.10; 0.07–0.40
Glaciofluvial sand (3 different tests)	0.38
Sand and gravel with clay lenses	0.3
Fine sand and glacial till	0.4
Medium to coarse sand with some gravel	0.39
Sand, silt, and clay	0.25
Medium to fine sand with clay and silt	0.25
Layered medium sand	0.004
Glacial outwash	0.35