Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
5.8
3.0
Journals
Water
Special Issues
Groundwater Flow and Transport Modeling in Aquifer Systems
share announcement

Groundwater Flow and Transport Modeling in Aquifer Systems

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydrogeology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 April 2025 | Viewed by 3807

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Zbigniew Kabala

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
Interests: groundwater; contaminant transport; aquifer characterization; pore-scale phenomena
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The importance of groundwater resources for providing drinking water cannot be underestimated—25–50% of drinking water comes from this increasingly threatened resource. Reports of groundwater contamination seem to be growing exponentially all over the world. The national Superfund Cleanup debt continues to increase in the USA, China, and many other countries. It has been estimated to be trillions of dollars. New approaches to modeling flow and contaminant transport in soils and aquifers are desperately needed for the subsurface remediation, characterization, and protection of our water resources.

This Special Issue of Water focuses on novel modeling studies in subsurface hydrology and hydrogeology as well as on field and laboratory experimental studies and their modeling. We encourage submissions providing new insights into the characterization of porous/fractured media as well as the transport of water, heat, contaminants, and/or nutrients through such media in their saturated and unsaturated (vadose) zones. We also welcome papers with a more traditional focus on applications of the established theories. We would like to see a mixture of papers across all scales of the subsurface media.

Water is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal on water science and technology, including the ecology and management of water resources, and is published semimonthly online by MDPI in Switzerland. More information about the journal is available at its website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/water. The journal’s 5-year Impact Factor is 3.5 (2022). Indexed by a number of high-visibility databases, including Web of Science and Scopus (Elsevier), the journal is ranked in the first or second quartile (Q1 or Q2) by these databases. As an open-access journal, it offers a much wider reach for its papers than do traditional, subscription-based journals. Published continuously since 2009, Water is indeed a solid, well-established journal that is here to stay.

We encourage and invite you to submit your next paper to this Special Issue in Water.

Dr. Zbigniew Kabala
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • modeling
  • borehole tests
  • laboratory tests
  • tracer tests
  • aquifer remediation
  • aquifer characterization
  • vertical circulation wells
  • geothermal resources

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

17 pages, 1870 KiB  
Article
Ensuring the Safety of an Extraction Well from an Upgradient Point Source of Pollution in a Computationally Constrained Setting
by Christopher Nenninger, James R. Mihelcic and Jeffrey A. Cunningham
Water 2024, 16(18), 2645; https://doi.org/10.3390/w16182645 - 18 Sep 2024
Viewed by 507
Abstract
Shallow groundwater is an important resource, especially in low- and middle-income countries; however, shallow groundwater is particularly vulnerable to point sources of pollution such as latrines or unlined waste disposal ponds. The objective of this paper is to derive a quantitative criterion for [...] Read more.
Shallow groundwater is an important resource, especially in low- and middle-income countries; however, shallow groundwater is particularly vulnerable to point sources of pollution such as latrines or unlined waste disposal ponds. The objective of this paper is to derive a quantitative criterion for siting an extraction well and an upgradient point source of pollution to ensure that they are hydraulically disconnected, i.e., that no water flows from the point source to the well. To achieve this objective, we modeled the flow of shallow groundwater considering uniform regional flow, a single point source of pollution, and a single extraction well. For any set of flow rates and upgradient point source distance, we sought the minimum “off-center distance” ymin (i.e., the distance in the direction perpendicular to regional flow) that ensures the well and the point source are hydraulically disconnected. For constituencies with access to computing resources and coding expertise, we used a computer-based method for determining ymin that is exact to within the accuracy of a root-finding algorithm; this approach is recommended when computer access is available. For constituencies lacking these resources, we determined a simple, closed-form, approximate solution for ymin that has an average error of less than 3% for the conditions we tested. For a subset of scenarios in which the point source is sufficiently far upgradient of the well (n = 77), the root mean square relative error of the approximate solution is only 0.52%. We found that ymin depends on a length parameter (Qw + Qps)/QR, where Qw is the extraction rate of the well, Qps is the injection rate of the point source, and QR is the regional groundwater flow rate per unit of perpendicular length. Either the exact solution or the closed-form approximation can help to site wells near point sources of pollution, or to site point sources near wells, in a manner that protects the health of the well user. The approximate solution is valuable because many constituencies that rely on shallow wells for water supply and latrines for sanitation also lack access to the computer resources necessary to apply the exact solution. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Groundwater Flow and Transport Modeling in Aquifer Systems)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 14562 KiB  
Article
Hydrodynamic Porosity: A New Perspective on Flow through Porous Media, Part II
by August H. Young and Zbigniew J. Kabala
Water 2024, 16(15), 2166; https://doi.org/10.3390/w16152166 - 31 Jul 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1646
Abstract
In this work, we build upon our previous finding that hydrodynamic porosity is an exponential function of pore-scale flow velocity (or interstitial Reynolds number). We previously discovered this relationship for media with a square cavity geometry—a highly idealized case of the dead-ended pore [...] Read more.
In this work, we build upon our previous finding that hydrodynamic porosity is an exponential function of pore-scale flow velocity (or interstitial Reynolds number). We previously discovered this relationship for media with a square cavity geometry—a highly idealized case of the dead-ended pore spaces in a porous medium. Thus, we demonstrate the applicability of this relationship to media with other cavity geometries. We do so by applying our previous analysis to rectangular and non-rectangular cavity geometries (i.e., circular, and triangular). We also study periodic flow geometries to determine the effect of upstream cavities on those downstream. We show that not only does our exponential relationship hold for media with a variety of cavity geometries, but it does so almost perfectly with a coefficient of determination (R2) of approximately one for each new set of simulation data. Given this high fit quality, it is evident that the exponential relationship we previously discovered is applicable to most, if not all, unwashed media. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Groundwater Flow and Transport Modeling in Aquifer Systems)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

27 pages, 10159 KiB  
Article
Hydrodynamic Porosity: A New Perspective on Flow through Porous Media, Part I
by August H. Young and Zbigniew J. Kabala
Water 2024, 16(15), 2158; https://doi.org/10.3390/w16152158 - 30 Jul 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1260
Abstract
Pore-scale flow velocity is an essential parameter in determining transport through porous media, but it is often miscalculated. Researchers use a static porosity value to relate volumetric or superficial velocities to pore-scale flow velocities. We know this modeling assumption to be an oversimplification. [...] Read more.
Pore-scale flow velocity is an essential parameter in determining transport through porous media, but it is often miscalculated. Researchers use a static porosity value to relate volumetric or superficial velocities to pore-scale flow velocities. We know this modeling assumption to be an oversimplification. The variable fraction of porosity conducive to flow, what we define as hydrodynamic porosity, θmobile, exhibits a quantifiable dependence on the Reynolds number (i.e., pore-scale flow velocity) in the Laminar flow regime. This fact remains largely unacknowledged in the literature. In this work, we quantify the dependence of θmobile on the Reynolds number via numerical flow simulation at the pore scale for rectangular pores of various aspect ratios, i.e., for highly idealized dead-end pore spaces. We demonstrate that, for the chosen cavity geometries, θmobile decreases by as much as 42% over the Laminar flow regime. Moreover, θmobile exhibits an exponential dependence on the Reynolds number, Re = R. The fit quality is effectively perfect, with a coefficient of determination (R2) of approximately 1 for each set of simulation data. Finally, we show that this exponential dependence can be easily fitted for pore-scale flow velocity through use of only a few Picard iterations, even with an initial guess that is 10 orders of magnitude off. Not only is this relationship a more accurate definition of pore-scale flow velocity, but it is also a necessary modeling improvement that can be easily implemented. In the companion paper (Part 2), we build upon the findings reported here and demonstrate their applicability to media with other pore geometries: rectangular and non-rectangular cavities (circular and triangular). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Groundwater Flow and Transport Modeling in Aquifer Systems)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-3
Back to TopTop