Equidimensional modelling of flow and transport processes in fractured porous systems II

Abstract

In fractured formations, the vastly different hydraulic properties of fractures and porous matrix lead to a considerable mass exchange between fracture and matrix, strongly affecting the flow and transport conditions in the domain of interest. This plays an important role for many environmental applications, e.g. the design of disposal systems for hazardous waste. In two papers, we display a new numerical concept describing saturated flow and transport processes in arbitrarily fractured porous media. An equidimensional approach is developed using elements of the same dimension for fracture and matrix discretisation. In Gebauer et al. (this issue, part I) we introduced a two-level multigrid method based on a hierarchical decomposition designed to solve equidimensional fracture-matrix-problems. In this paper we will discuss the effect of equidimensionality on the modelling results. Furthermore, the influence of the chosen transport discretisation technique will be shown.