SIMULATION OF WATER FLOW IN DOUBLE POROSITY SOILS ON UNSTRUCTURED GRIDS WITH THE FINITE-VOLUME METHOD

Abstract

Double-porosity soils consist of two interacting porous systems corresponding to weakly conductive aggregates and highly conductive inter-aggregate regions. The flow of water in such media can be described with a two-scale model obtained by homogenization. The model consists of a single macroscopic equation for the flow in the highly conductive porous system coupled with a number of micro scale equations for the flow in the weakly conductive aggregates. In this paper we present a numerical algorithm to solve the resulting system of equations for the case of macroscopically two-dimensional flow. It is based on the finite volume approach for unstructured grid of triangular cells. Special attention is paid to the coupling of the micro- and macro-scale equations. An exemplary calculation is presented, concerning infiltration and redistribution of water in a hill-slope of doubleporosity structure with cubic aggregates.