Multidisciplinary interactions in energy and environmental modeling

AbstractMathematical models have been widely used to understand, predict, or optimize many complex physical processes, from semiconductor or pharmaceutical design to large-scale applications such as global weather models to astrophysics. In particular, simulation of environmental effects of air polution is extensive. Here we address the need for using similar models to understand the fate and transport of groundwater contaminants and to design in situ remediation strategies.Three basic problem areas must be addressed in the modeling and simulation of the flow of groundwater contamination. One must first obtain an effective model to describe the complex fluid/fluid and fluid/rock interactions that control the transport of contaminants in groundwater. This includes the problem of obtaining accurate reservoir descriptions at various length scales and modeling the effects of this heterogeneity in the reservoir simulators. Next, one must develop accurate discretization techniques that retain the important physical properties of the continuous models. Finally, one should develop efficient numerical solution algorithms that utilize the potential of the emerging computing architectures. We will discuss recent advances in each of these three areas