Publications Details
Using TOUGH2 to model capillary barriers
Ross (1990) developed an analytical relationship to calculate the diversion length of a tilted fine-over-coarse capillary barrier. Oldenburg and Pruess compared TOUGH2 simulation results to the diversion length predicted by Ross` formula using upstream and harmonic weighting. The results were mixed. 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 has been proposed as 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.