Mean travel time of conservative solutes in randomly heterogeneous unbounded domains under mean uniform flow

Abstract

We derive a closed‐form expression for mean travel time of a conservative solute migrating under uniform in the mean flow conditions within an infinite stationary field with simple exponential correlation of the natural logarithm of hydraulic conductivity. Our expression is developed from a consistent second‐order expansion in σY (standard deviation of the log hydraulic conductivity) of the equations for moments of travel time and trajectories of conservative solutes in two‐dimensional randomly nonuniform flows of Guadagnini et al. [2001]. As such, it is nominally valid for moderately heterogeneous fields, with σY2 < 1. Its validity for larger heterogeneity degrees is tested against numerical Monte Carlo simulations. Our results clarify the nonlinear effect in the mean travel time with respect to distance that has been observed numerically (and modeled empirically) in the literature.