A model for multiphase flow and transport in porous media including a phenomenological approach to account for deformation -- a model concept and its validation within a code intercomparison study (Q1044361)

This paper presents a new model (MUFTE) called phenomenological because the effects of soil deformation on flow and transport are only considered by constitutive relations, which allows an adaptation of hydraulic properties. Thus, the model is able to describe the influence of cohesive soil swelling and shrinking due to water drainage or imbibition. In fact, multiphase flow processes in unsaturated soils occur in different areas of natural and technical systems. They play an important role, for example in the interaction between the hydrosystem groundwater and atmosphere or in geotechnical engineering problems like landslides after heavy rain events, dam failures during floods or sealing failures of cohesive mineral liners below landfills. The paper is organized in 7 sections as follows: section 2 gives a detailed explanation of the new MUFTE model including the phenomenological approach for structural alterations. Section 3 provides information about the intercomparison model which is implemented in the finite element tool ABAQUS. The momentum balance for the solid matrix is also briefly discussed since it represents the basic difference between this model and the phenomenological MUFTE model. Section 4 gives a short outline of the inverse model that is applied for the parameter estimation. Section 5 presents the setup of the numerical experiment, including a description of the domain, the initial and boundary conditions; section 6 describes the model intercomparison study. Finally, section 7 summarizes the results and conclusions of this paper and gives an outlook on further work.