Application of discrete fracture model to simulate groundwater movement in fractured carbonate terrain

Conference · Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1992 · Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs; (United States)

OSTI ID:5687754

Bradbury, K R ^[1]

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1. Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, Madison, WI (United States)

Groundwater-contamination and wellhead-protection concerns frequently occur in fractured-rock settings, for which reliable predictive models are rarely available. The Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey has been experimenting with the Stochastic Discrete Fracture (SDF) model of Rouleau (1988) as a tool for investigating groundwater movement through fracture networks in dolomite at a field site in Door County, Wisconsin. The SDF code simulates two-dimensional, steady-state groundwater flow through fracture networks and is based on the governing equation for laminar flow between smooth parallel plates. The model either generates stochastic fracture networks based on field statistics or uses actual fracture networks observed in aerial photographs and borehole logs. After computing hydraulic heads and flow rates at fracture intersections, the model tracks and advective movement of simulated particles through the networks, and generates statistics about groundwater velocities and directions. The model has been applied successfully to areal and cross-sectional simulations at the field site, where the hydraulic head and hydraulic conductivity distributions are known from previous studies. Although field application of the model requires numerous simplifying assumptions, it provides insight about the importance of individual fractures in governing groundwater movement, about the best ways of characterizing fractures for hydrogeologic studies in carbonate terrains, and about the scale at which it is reasonable to simulate the fracture system as an equivalent porous medium.

• OSTI ID: 5687754
• Report Number(s): CONF-921058-; CODEN: GAAPBC
• Journal Information: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs; (United States), Vol. 24:7; Conference: 1992 annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA), Cincinnati, OH (United States), 26-29 Oct 1992; ISSN 0016-7592
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

58 GEOSCIENCES
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
FRACTURED RESERVOIRS
HYDROLOGY
GROUND WATER
FLOW MODELS
WISCONSIN
DOLOMITE
FLOW RATE
GEOLOGIC FRACTURES
GEOLOGIC MODELS
HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY
SIMULATION
TWO-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
CARBONATE MINERALS
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
GEOLOGIC STRUCTURES
HYDROGEN COMPOUNDS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MINERALS
NORTH AMERICA
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
USA
WATER
580000* - Geosciences
540210 - Environment
Terrestrial- Basic Studies- (1990-)