Documentation on Limitations and Applicabilities of the Use of Off-the-Shelf GroundWater Models in Site Cleanup

• Main Authors: Ruiz, Carlos E, Zakikhani, Mansour, McGrath, Christian J, Deliman, Patrick N, Howington, Stacy
• Format: Publication
• Language: English
• Published: 22.10.1997
• Subjects: ANALYTIC FUNCTIONS; AQUIFERS; ARMY FACILITIES; CLEANING; FLUID MECHANICS; GROUND WATER; HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY; HYDROLOGY; LIMNOLOGY AND POTAMOLOGY; MATHEMATICAL MODELS; MULTIPHASE FLOW; OFF THE SHELF EQUIPMENT; SITE INVESTIGATIONS; SITE SELECTION; WATER POLLUTION; WATER QUALITY

The U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station Groundwater Modeling Team performed a broad review of available groundwater models and an assessment of Army modeling. The first step was a model screening based primarily on current and anticipated Army and Department of Defense needs, followed by a more rigorous evaluation. This report provides the initial evaluation of more than 12 groundwater models that were selected based on the screening criteria. The effort included scrutiny of the code structure, certain process formulation, and performance evaluation relative to appropriate problems for which analytical solutions are available and/or hypothetical scenarios. Four classes of models were evaluated: (1) saturated flow and/or transport, (2) coupled unsaturate/saturated flow and/or transport, (3) unsaturated flow and/or transport, and (4) multiphase models. Model performance in the initial evaluation was acceptable for the suite of models. The second step was to evaluate/compare the models against analytic solutions, hypothetical scenarios, and/or filed data.