Publications Details
Comparison of Ross` capillary barrier diversion formula with detailed numerical simulations
Ross developed an analytical relationship to calculate the diversion length of a tilted fine-over-coarse capillary barrier. Oldenburg and Pruess compared simulation results using upstream and harmonic weighting to the diversion length predicted by Ross formula with mixed results; the qualitative agreement is reasonable but the quantitative comparison is poor, especially for upstream weighting. The proximity of the water table to the fine-coarse interface at breakthrough is a possible reason for the poor agreement. In the present study, the Oldenburg and Pruess problem is extended to address the water table issue. When the water table is sufficiently far away from the interface at breakthrough, good qualitative and quantitative agreement is obtained using upstream weighting.