Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulation and laboratory-scale experiments of complex flow dynamics in unsaturated fractures

Abstract:

Unsaturated flow in fractured porous media exhibits highly complex flow dynamics and a wide range of intermittent flow processes. Especially in wide aperture fractures, flow processes may be dominated by gravitational instead of capillary forces leading to a deviation from the classical volume effective approaches (Richard’s equation, Van Genuchten type relationships). The existence of various flow modes such as droplets, rivulets, turbulent and adsorbed films is well known, however, their spatial and temporal distribution within fracture networks is still an open question partially due to the lack of appropriate modeling tools. With our work we want to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying flow and transport dynamics in unsaturated fractured media in order to support the development of more refined upscaled methods, applicable on catchment scales. We present fracture-scale flow simulations obtained with a parallelized Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) model. The model allows us to simulate free-surface flow dynamics including the effect of surface tension for a wide range of wetting conditions in smooth and rough fractures. Due to the highly efficient generation of surface tension via particle-particle interaction forces the dynamic wetting of surfaces can readily be obtained. We validated the model via empirical and semi-analytical solutions and conducted laboratory-scale percolation experiments of unsaturated flow through synthetic fracture systems. The setup allows us to obtain travel time distributions and identify characteristic flow mode distributions on wide aperture fractures intercepted by horizontal fracture elements.