CONSOLIDATION PROCESSES AND COUPLED FLUXES


General Considerations

The study of the time dependent transport properties of contaminants migrating through mineral barriers is a fundamental theoretical aspect of many geotechnical problems. Of particular importance is the determination of the chemical, water, electric and heat flows, which are driven by chemical, hydraulic, electric and temperature gradients, respectively. The main objective of these studies is the determination of the transport coefficients which relate the fluxes to the gradients. Water flow has been extensively studied because of its important role in problems of seepage, consolidation and stability. Chemical, thermal and electrical flows in soils are also important, especially in ground and groundwater pollution, waste disposal and storage, remediation of contaminated sites, dredging and management of dredged material, and many other environmental problems. Results for simplified models are present in the literature.

Results


In (1) and (2), we propose a transport model for the migration of contaminant through mineral barriers in presence of chemical and water gradients, and investigate its implications by obtaining an approximate solution of the transport equations, based on a multiple time scale expansion. We assume that no electrical or temperature gradients are present in the system and that all dissolved species move together, so that the chemical flow is not separated into its anionic and cationic components.
 
  1. L. Demeio and D. Sani, Multiple time scale analysis of water-salts coupled flow transport equations, Internal Report N. 4/2000, Dipartimento di Matematica "V. Volterra", Universita' degli Studi di Ancona.
  2. L. Demeio and D. Sani, A proposed model for water-salts coupled flow transport equations, Mathematical and Computer Modelling, December 2000, in press.

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