ABSTRACT
A physical model has been built for studying groundwater solute transport in artificial homogeneous and heterogeneous aquifer. This model provides us with laboratory controlled conditions for the experimental tests that lead to a better understanding of transport in heterogeneous media. This experimental work gets insight into the influence of heterogeneity on the phenomenon of dispersion and to distinguish the various dispersion regimes. A small pilot study has been carried out at Geotechnical Laboratory of the Technical University of Delft. The experiments are performed in a two-dimensional box. The porous media are constructed from glass beads with different sizes. The tracer utilized is a Potassium Permanganate (KMnO4) solution. The investigated media are homogeneous medium and two heterogeneous media (medium 1 and 2). Subdiffusive dispersion is observed in medium 1 because the plume moves from highly permeable to less permeable zones. Superdiffusive dispersion can be seen in medium 2 due to the existence of preferential flow paths.
