Transport in a horizontal flow chamber

Abstract

A chamber was designed and used to simulate shallow groundwater flow in the field. The chamber, made of Plexiglas with dimensions 120 by 60 by 60cm, was filled to a depth of 30cm with sand and had a multiport arrangement of 10mm-diam. holes on a 5 by 5cm grid on both end walls. As a first approximation, the flow and transport were assumed to be one dimensional, and a convective-dispersive solute-transport model was applied to the Cl breakthrough data of each of the 50 outlet ports in order to quantify the spatial distribution of the dispersion-coefficient values at the outlet plate. Based on the inconsistency observed between measured and estimated pore-water velocities and dispersion coefficients of each of the 50 outlet ports, it appears that the one-dimensional model is not appropriate to adequately characterize transport parameter in this horizontal flow system. -from Authors