Development of a Nonisothermal Dual Permeability Model for Structured Soils

Abstract:

The Philip and de Vries (1957) model and its extensions (e.g., Smits et al. (2011) ) cannot appropriately characterize preferential flow processes in the structured heterogeneous soils including macropores (fractures, cracks, root channels, etc.), which is ubiquitous at the terrestrial surfaces. The macropores in the vadose zone not only provide pathways for increased downward liquid flow and may enhance fast transport of nonvolatile contaminants to the groundwater, but also provide pathways for gas and vapor transport and may enhance upward movement of volatile contaminants (Scanlon et al., 1997). In other words, with respect to the structured soils, the wetting phases (e.g., liquid water) will preferentially reside in the small pores such as soil matrix, while the nonwetting phases (e.g., air and vapor) will tend to occupy the larger pores such as fractures. As a result of such phase distribution, the temperatures in the matrix and macropores are also expected to be different. In this work, we attempted to formulate and develop a dual permeability model in heterogeneous soils suitable for coupled water and heat flow descriptions. We defined two continua (each continuum has its own set of parameters and variables) and solved separate mass and energy balance equations in each continuum. The water and heat transport equations in each continuum are coupled by exchange terms. This dual permeability coupled water and heat flow model has the capability to correctly simulate preferential evaporation over fine-textured soils due to the fact that the capillary forces divert the pore water from coarse-textured soils (high temperature region) toward the fine-textured soils (low temperature region).

 

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