Experiment on Water Infiltration and Solute Migration in Porous and Fractured Media

Abstract

The experiments were performed by considering the upper loose porous media and lower fractured media as a typical structure of vadose zones, and by constructing the corresponding physical model to simulate water flow and solute transport processes in order to investigate water flow features and migration mechanism. It has been indicated that in the porous and fractured complex media, if the lower fracture structure remains unchanged, the structure and permeability of the porous media offer considerable impact on infiltration processes. Additionally, if the structure and permeability of the porous media remain unchanged, the overall permeability and flow features of the fracture structure are significantly controlled by fracture configurations. Furthermore, for the fracture structures with different fracture configurations, it is indicated that increasing of the density of the vertical fractures results in much more enhancement of the solute concentration decay rate than that caused by increasing the density of the horizontal ones. This investigation was expected to be of scientific significance and practical value for effective groundwater protection.