Modeling moisture and thermal transport in unsaturated porous media

This paper presents the development of a multidimensional model for simulating moisture and thermal transport in an unsaturated aquifer system using the integrated compartment method (ICM). The entire unsaturated zone is divided into a number of compartments with different sizes and shapes. The Philip-de Vries equations governing moisture movement and heat transfer are integrated over each of the compartments to yield a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. The system is then solved by one of three optional time integration schemes. These include the split explicit, the implicit pointwise iteration, and the matrix inversion iteration schemes. The model is verified by comparing its simulations with those of known analytical computations for simplified cases. Results indicate that the ICM algorithm can indeed simulate moisture movement and heat transfer in accordance with the Philip-de Vries equations. The validation of the model is under further investigation.