Despite the broad relevance of flow and transport through geologic porous media, our understanding still faces significant challenges. One such challenge is the almost ubiquitous observation of anomalous (non-Fickian) transport behavior, from laboratory experiments in packed beds, sand columns and rock samples to field scale experiments. The signatures of anomalous behavior are early breakthrough and non-Gaussian or multipeaked plume shapes with long tailing—effects that cannot be captured by a traditional advection-dispersion formulation.

We study origins of anomalous transport and develop predictive transport models that can capture anomalous transport across multiple scales from pore to fracture to field scale. The developed model requires only few key physical parameters that can be estimated from field measurements.

Figure above shows a schematic of anomalous transport in subsurface. The complex interplay between heterogeneous macroscopic flow patterns caused by geologic heterogeneity and pore-scale incomplete mixing caused by pore-scale heterogeneity is a major source of anomalous transport.

More details will be updated soon.