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Description
In this communication, we report experimental measurements of conservative solute transport beneath the water–air interface in porous media, with applications to modeling nutrient and contaminant transport in the vadose zone. Using an index-matched porous bed subjected to periodic water table variations, we quantify the transverse spreading of a fluorescent dye and determine the dispersivity both near and far from the water table. We find that transverse dispersivity can be largely enhanced compared to saturated flow, depending on the Péclet and Capillary numbers considered. We attribute this enhancement to the irreversibility arising from intermittent and inertial capillary displacements of the interface, which acts in addition to laminar chaotic advection at the pore scale.
| Country | France |
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