A simple procedure for estimating the effective hydraulic conductivity of a two-dimensional saturated or partly-saturated fracture network
Many of the sites that have been proposed as potential locations of underground radioactive waste respositories contain fractured rocks. When modeling the hydrological behavior of these sites, for either the purpose of site characterization or performance assessment, computational gridblocks are often used that contain large numbers of individual fractures. In order to treat these gridblocks as equivalent continua, it is necessary to develop a procedure for relating the hydraulic properties of the individual fractures, and the topology of the fracture network, to the overall gridblock-scale permeability. The purpose of this paper is to describe a simple upscaling procedure, and demonstrate its use in cases of both saturated and unsaturated flow. The effective medium theory developed by Kirkpatrick has been used as the basis for a procedure for finding the effective gridblock-scale conductivity of a two-dimensional fracture network. In contrast to computationally-intensive flow simulations, the proposed procedure requires only the solution of a single nonlinear equation. The method has been tested against some previously published numerical simulations of flow through saturated and unsaturated networks, and in both cases yields reasonably accurate predictions of the macroscopic hydraulic conductivity.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States); Geological Survey, Reston, VA (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00098
- OSTI ID:
- 86883
- Report Number(s):
- LBL-37040; CONF-9504179-1; ON: DE95014872; TRN: 95:017762
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 6. annual international conference on high level radioactive waste management, Las Vegas, NV (United States), 30 Apr - 5 May 1995; Other Information: PBD: Apr 1995
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Upscaling of hydraulic conductivity in partially saturated heterogeneous porous formation
EFFECTS OF FAULTED STRATIGRAPHY ON SATURATED ZONE FLOW BENEATH YUCCA MOUNTAIN, NEVADA