https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-03498-6
Regular Article
Non-Fickian transport of sodium chloride in inter-river land: experiment validation and fractional derivative modeling
1
State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, College of Mechanics and Materials, Hohai University, 210098, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
2
School of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, 230009, Hefei, China
Received:
23
June
2022
Accepted:
14
November
2022
Published online:
23
November
2022
River–groundwater interactions, accompanied by solute transport, are one of the most important contemporary challenges. Non-Fickian diffusion behavior has been extensively documented for solute transport in groundwater or river, but less in river–groundwater system. This paper confirms the existence of anomalous diffusion in the river–groundwater system by experiments and then accurately describes the solute transport process by fractional derivative model, especially for the long-time power law tailing characteristic. Laboratory experiment in inter-river land sample shows that the time fractional advection–dispersion equation, which has a parameter (time index 
) defining memory function and other basic transport parameters (velocity v and dispersion coefficient D) with the different hydrogeologic significances, provides a prominent improvement in simulating non-Fickian diffusion behavior compared with the classical advection–dispersion equation. Analysis results indicate that low flow rates reduce mass exchange between the mobile and immobile domains, resulting in late-time heavy tailing phenomenon. In a word, this study provides a new approach to improve our understanding on solute transport in the interfluve with river–groundwater interactions.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
