U.S.-Germany Cooperative Research: Establishing a Porous Media Observational Facility at the University of Kassel, Germany

该奖项支持国际和平研究所和德雷克塞尔大学的Tissa Illangasekare博士与卡塞尔大学地球水力学和工程水文学系的Manfred Koch合作。合作将设计和建造一个大型(10米)实验容器，其中包含结构化多孔介质，其可测量的统计特性可与定标的非均质砂砾含水层相媲美，并使用该容器在受控条件下观察流体流动和质量传输。最终目标是通过将观测结果与一些非理想污染物运移过程的随机和其他数学模型进行比较，改进对含水层污染的预测。几乎任何多孔介质中的流体动力学问题都可以在所设计的容器中进行详细研究。在这项研究中特别感兴趣的是稠密的、可混相的流体输送、病毒和胶体的输送以及不混相的流体流动。所有这些主题都是环境问题，目前还没有广泛接受的、准确的预测方法来预测非均质多孔介质中的运移。

This award supports the PI and co-PI, Dr. Tissa Illangasekare of Drexel University to collaborate with Manfred Koch of the Department of Geohydraulics and Engineering Hydrology at the University of Kassel. The collaboration will design and construct a large-scale (10-meter) experimental vessel containing structured porous media with measurable statistical properties comparable to that of a scaled, heterogeneous sand and gravel aquifer, and to use the vessel for observation of fluid flow and mass transport under controlled conditions. The ultimate goal is to improve prediction of aquifer contamination by comparison of observational results with stochastic and other mathematical models of a number of non-ideal contaminant transport processes. Almost any fluid dynamics problem in porous media could be studied in detail in the proposed vessel. Of special interest in this study are dense, miscible fluid transport, virus and colloid transport, and immiscible fluid flow. All of those topics are environmental problems for which widely-accepted, accurate predictive methods for transport in heterogeneous porous media are not currently available.