On the use of COMSOL Multiphysics for seawater intrusion in fractured coastal aquifers

B. Mozafari, M. Fahs, B. Ataie-Ashtiani, C. T. Simmons, Rafic Younes

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)
73 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

COMSOL Multiphysics is a comprehensive simulation software environment for a wide range of applications. COMSOL has an interactive interface that facilitates the modeling procedure and allows an easy coupling of different physical processes. The Subsurface Flow module extends the COMSOL modeling environment to applications related to fluid flow in saturated and variably saturated porous media. COMSOL is increasingly used in the investigation of geophysical, hydrogeological and environmental phenomena. The main goal of this work is to explore the ability of COMSOL for simulating seawater intrusion (SWI) in fractured coastal aquifers. Numerical modeling of such a problem is of high interest as fractured/karstic coastal aquifers are widespread and processes of SWI in the presence of fractures remains poorly understood. We set up a COSMOL model for the popular Henry problem. The accuracy of COMSOL is highlighted by comparison against the semianalytical solutions for simple homogeneous aquifers. For fractured aquifers, the performance of COSMOL is evaluated by comparison against an in-house finite element model based on the discrete fracture model and against the results of existing works. Given its versatility and flexibility, COMSOL shows promise as a tool for SWI in coastal aquifers.

Original languageEnglish
Article number00020
Number of pages6
JournalE3S Web of Conferences
Volume54
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 17 Sep 2018
Event25th Salt Water Intrusion Meeting, SWIM 2018 - Gdansk, Poland
Duration: 17 Jun 201822 Jun 2018

Bibliographical note

© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Keywords

  • COMSOL Multiphysics
  • SWI
  • coastal aquifers

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