Modeling Techniques for Geoenvironmental Engineering Problems

Contamination of subsurface results in degradation of geomaterials (i.e., soils and rock mass), in the long run. This is mainly due to the presence of chemical and/or radiological materials in undesirable concentrations and at elevated temperatures. However, as contaminant-geomaterial interaction is an extremely slow and complex process, which primarily depends on their physical, chemical and mineralogical properties, it is quite difficult to study this interaction under laboratory or in situ conditions. In such a situation, accelerated physical modeling, using a geotechnical centrifuge, and finite element/difference based numerical modeling techniques are found to be quite useful. This paper presents details of various modeling techniques developed by the researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India, for studying heat migration, flow and interaction (fate) of reactive and non-reactive contaminants in the geoenvironment, under saturated and unsaturated conditions. In addition, paper presents details of the technique that can be employed for determining susceptibility of a material to undergo physico-chemico-mineralogical alterations due to its interaction with contaminants.