Ground-Water Flow and Contamination Models: Description and Evaluation

Abstract

This paper follows the work of Reddi and his colleagues, and summarizes the activities of the ASCE Groundwater Quality Committee in fulfilling tasks 4 and 5 outlined in their work. The capabilities and limitations of selected widely used ground-water models in solving practical problems are discussed. The objective of this paper was not to check model accuracy by solving benchmark problems for which all material properties are known and other input parameters are well defined. Rather, the strengths and limitations of these models are outlined in terms of their applicability, usability, and user evaluated degree of success in various field applications. The results and discussion are, for the most part, based on responses received from questionnaires sent to model developers and model users. The paper also provides a very detailed description of the input parameters used in these models. The criteria for selecting appropriate parametric values and boundary conditions are also discussed in detail.