1,2,1- 1Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Hydrogeochemistry, Geosciences, Tübingen, Germany (anton.koehler@uni-tuebingen.de)
- 2Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canda
- 3Institute of Groundwater Management, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
- 4Department of Water Resources, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India
Recent development of the Analytic Element Method (AEM) (Köhler et al., 2026) enables simulation of steady-state reactive transport in two-dimensional aquifers considering several types of contamination scenarios, which otherwise would only be feasible with numerical models.
But even in numerical models, source geometries and architectures are often overly simplified as, e.g., simple line or patch sources. Such simplifications may significantly impair the reliability of model results. The AEM approach facilitates the representation of more complex source shapes also including discontinuities and multiple sources by superposition of elements. In the developed 2D model, the contaminant sources are considered as a combination of line and circle elements of constant concentration.
The effect of source discontinuities on steady-state plumes is qualitatively evaluated for both horizontally and vertically oriented domains. Further, an empiric relation between both number and width of source discontinuities, and the maximum plume length, in both domain orientations is derived. Evaluation of plume lengths from synthetic cases provide a linear and quadratic dependency of the number and width of discontinuities, respectively. This leads to an empirical formulation of a simplified effective source extent based on these two parameters.
The results highlight the advantages of the AEM model for simulating practical cases, particularly, in the early assessment stages, but also show that the method is appropriate for gaining insight in complex problem settings at a conceptual modelling stage. Computationally efficient methods such as the AEM may also help in future developments as part of hybrid modelling approaches to improve early site assessment.
Köhler, A. V., Craig, J. R., Yadav, P. K.,&Liedl, R. (2026). An Analytic Element Method solution for simulating multiple steady-state groundwater contamination scenarios. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, 276, 104733. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jconhyd.2025.104733
How to cite: Köhler, A. V., Yadav, P. K., Tripathi, M., Craig, J. R., Liedl, R., Grathwohl, P., and Dietrich, P.: The effect of source discontinuities on steady-state plume extents, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-19419, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-19419, 2026.
