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Title: Fickian dispersion is anomalous

Journal Article · · Journal of Hydrology
 [1];  [2]
  1. Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States)
  2. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

The thesis put forward here is that the occurrence of Fickian dispersion in geophysical settings is a rare event and consequently should be labeled as anomalous. What people classically call anomalous is really the norm. In a Lagrangian setting, a process with mean square displacement which is proportional to time is generally labeled as Fickian dispersion. With a number of counter examples we show why this definition is fraught with difficulty. In a related discussion, we show an infinite second moment does not necessarily imply the process is super dispersive. By employing a rigorous mathematical definition of Fickian dispersion we illustrate why it is so hard to find a Fickian process. We go on to employ a number of renormalization group approaches to classify non-Fickian dispersive behavior. Scaling laws for the probability density function for a dispersive process, the distribution for the first passage times, the mean first passage time, and the finite-size Lyapunov exponent are presented for fixed points of both deterministic and stochastic renormalization group operators. The fixed points of the renormalization group operators are p-self-similar processes. A generalized renormalization group operator is introduced whose fixed points form a set of generalized self-similar processes. Finally, power-law clocks are introduced to examine multi-scaling behavior. Several examples of these ideas are presented and discussed.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
1236687
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-15-20679; PII: S0022169415004497
Journal Information:
Journal of Hydrology, Vol. 531, Issue P1; ISSN 0022-1694
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 28 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Reducing uncertainty associated with CO2 injection and brine production in heterogeneous formations journal June 2015
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Cited By (6)

Theory and Applications of Macroscale Models in Porous Media journal April 2019
Trajectories as Training Images to Simulate Advective‐Diffusive, Non‐Fickian Transport journal April 2019
Unstable Displacement of Non-aqueous Phase Liquids with Surfactant and Polymer journal October 2018
Predicting Water Cycle Characteristics from Percolation Theory and Observational Data journal January 2020
Diffusion in Porous Media: Phenomena and Mechanisms journal March 2019
Predicting Water Cycle Characteristics from Percolation Theory and Observational Data text January 2020

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