An improved method for the calculation of unsaturated-saturated water flow by coupling the FEM and FDM

Gao, Yulong1,2,4; Pu, Shengyan3; Zheng, Chunmiao2,4; Yi, Shuping2,4

2019-10-18

10.1038/s41598-019-51405-4

Scientific Reports   影响因子和分区

2045-2322

Numerical modeling of water movement in both unsaturated soils and saturated groundwater aquifers is important for water resource management simulations. The development of efficient numerical algorithms for coupling unsaturated and saturated flow has been a long-lasting challenge in hydrologic modeling, especially for regional-scale modeling. In this study, a new method coupling the Finite Element Method (FEM) and Finite Difference Method (FDM), FE-FDM, is developed to solve Richards equation for simulating unsaturated-saturated water flow. The FEM is adopted to discretize the governing equation in the horizontal direction, while the FDM is used in the vertical direction. This method combines the advantages of FEM in domain discretization, especially for complex computational domain, and the advantages of FDM in modeling simplicity and efficiency. The validity of the new method is demonstrated with three test cases that show that the FE-FDM solutions are accurate and are applicable for regional scale problems. In the test cases, the FE-FDM solutions are compared with experimental data and numerical results calculated with common software packages including FEFLOW and COMSOL. This study verified that the FE-FDM is applicable for simulating water flow in the unsaturated-saturated zone.

SCI

英语

通讯

Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Soil and Groundwater Pollution Control[2017B030301012]

Science & Technology - Other Topics

Multidisciplinary Sciences

WOS:000490988200054

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

Web of Science

1.Harbin Inst Technol, Sch Environm, Harbin 150090, Heilongjiang, Peoples R China
2.Southern Univ Sci & Technol, Sch Environm Sci & Engn, Shenzhen, Peoples R China
3.Chengdu Univ Technol, State Key Lab Geohazard Prevent & Geoenvironm Pro, Chengdu, Sichuan, Peoples R China
4.Guangdong Prov Key Lab Soil & Groundwater Pollut, Shenzhen, Peoples R China

Gao, Yulong,Pu, Shengyan,Zheng, Chunmiao,et al. An improved method for the calculation of unsaturated-saturated water flow by coupling the FEM and FDM[J]. Scientific Reports,2019,9.

Gao, Yulong,Pu, Shengyan,Zheng, Chunmiao,&Yi, Shuping.(2019).An improved method for the calculation of unsaturated-saturated water flow by coupling the FEM and FDM.Scientific Reports,9.

Gao, Yulong,et al."An improved method for the calculation of unsaturated-saturated water flow by coupling the FEM and FDM".Scientific Reports 9(2019).