MODEL FOR THE CONTAMINATION OF CONFINED AQUIFERS BY POLLUTANTS

This paper studies the problem of an infinite confined aquifer which at time t ＜ 0 is assumed motionless. At time t = 0 crude oil seeps into the aquifer, thereby contaminating the valuable drinking water. Since the crude oil and water are im-miscible, the problem is posed as a one-dimensional two-phase unsteady moving boundary problem. A similarity solution is developed in which the moving front parameter is obtained by Newton-Ralphson iteration. A numerical scheme, involving the front tracking method, is devised employing the fourth order Runge-Kutta method. Comparison of the exact and numerical schemes shows an error of only 3%. Thus the developed numerical scheme is quite accurate in tackling more realistic problems where exact solutions are not possible.