Numerical Model of Saltwater Transport Toward a Pumping Well

Abstract

The proposed numerical model for estimation of advective and dispersive saltwater transport below a partially penetrating pumping well, incorporates a solution of the coupled flow and transport equations. The advective transport is computed by a varied form of the method of characteristics wherein each moving point is assigned a volume rather than the concentration. Subsequently, the dispersive component is accounted for by solving the transport equation by finite-difference technique treating the precomputed advective transport as a source/sink term. The model permits estimation of the time and space variant salt concentration in soil water and the time variant salt concentration in pumped water. The model has been validated against two analytical solutions and a set of published field data.