Modelling coupled heat and contaminant transport in groundwater

Abstract This paper presents the results of a research programme conducted on the geotechnical centrifuge at The University of Western Australia to investigate coupled heat and contaminant transport in the soil surrounding a buried waste source. The phenomena which govern heat and contaminant transport through porous media are discussed, the principles of geotechnical centrifuge modelling are outlined, and relevant scaling laws that govern the relationship between a centrifuge model and the prototype, with respect to the problem of coupled waste transport, are presented. A model test, simulating two‐dimensional migration from a buried heat and contaminant source, is described, and the results from four model tests are presented. The experimental data show that hydraulic instability is responsible for the transport of contaminant in the soil around the source and that the mode of instability is determined by the magnitude of the effective Rayleigh number.