Physical and numerical experiments of flow and transport in heterogeneous fractured media : single fracture flow at high Reynolds numbers, and reactive particle transport

Abstract

The first part of the thesis is focusing on an experimental study of single phase flow processes in a single granite fracture. In order to obtain the aperture field, two different measurement methods were developed and evaluated. The effect of heterogeneities of the aperture field was shown by a visualization of streamlines. The flow experiments revealed that inertial effects lead to a correction of the effective permeability which is of second order in the mean flux. The comparison of results of the experiment with numerical simulations performed on the basis of the local Cubic Law is discussed. The second part of the thesis is about numerical modeling of reactive transport processes. Two different models have been developed. The first one is based on a Lagrangian approach, whereas the second one is based on a microscopic description of reactions and transport using a Master equation approach. A comparison of the two algorithms is discussed based on three selected application examples.