Three-Dimensional Solute Transport Problems in an Aquifer: Numerical Approaches

The solution of solute transport problem in an aquifer with suitable boundary conditions has been dealt by various analytical methods in the past. But, the analytical approach becomes more difficult to apply when either dealing with complex boundary conditions or higher order solute transport problems. The difficulty may be reduced by handling the problem by numerical approaches as in the present paper, forward in time centered in space (FTCS) finite-difference scheme is used to solve the three-dimensional advection-dispersion equation (ADE) with Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. The Dirichlet boundary conditions are taken temporally dependent. The numerical solution is obtained graphically with the help of MATLAB software package, and further under a special case, the numerical solution obtained by FTCS scheme is validated with the solution obtained by PDEtool which is based on the finite-element method.