Establishing a quantitative functional relationship between capillary pressure saturation and interfacial area. 1998 annual progress report
- Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (US)
- Princeton Univ., NJ (US)
- Univ. of Notre Dame, IN (US)
'Through an integrated and focused research program that is comprised of theoretical, computational and experimental efforts this research effort is directed at: (1) improving on newly developed laboratory techniques to quantify and directly measure the functional relationship between phase interfacial area (a), saturation (S) and capillary pressure (Pc), (2) developing new computational algorithms in conjunction with laboratory measurements to predict Pc, S and a, (3) testing existing theory and developing new theory to describe the relationship between Pc, S and a at the large scale, and (4) synthesizing the results of the experimental, computational and theoretical investigative efforts to develop a generic model based upon an intrinsic soil metric to describe the functional dependence of Pc, S and a. The results of this research could be used to generate a site specific soil moisture characteristic surface. Ultimately the results of this research could serve as the foundation upon which the true health and safety risk of a site could be evaluated, the applicability of various remediation technologies examined, and the performance of implemented treatment strategies controlled. This report summarizes work after 18 months of a 3-year project. The authors are working to integrate the theory, experiments, and numerical simulations into a coherent approach to study the role of interfacial areas in porous media flow physics. The recent efforts have focused on quantifying the relationship between capillary pressure, saturation, and interfacial areas. The theory developed by Gray et al. (1998) indicates clearly that the traditional relationship between capillary pressure and saturation is incomplete, and interfacial area per unit volume must be added to the functional dependence. The theory does not, however, provide the form of that functional dependence; determination of this relationship must be done experimentally. To this end, both the network modelling and the PVI approach are being pursued.'
- Research Organization:
- Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Environmental Management (EM), Office of Science and Risk Policy
- OSTI ID:
- 13607
- Report Number(s):
- EMSP-54793-98; ON: DE00013607
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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