Hydrological Services
Simulation of hydraulic head in a karst aquifer with a well-developed conduit. This simulation was created using SwRI-developed groundwater modeling software MODFLOW-DCM, which explicitly represents conduits embedded in a porous medium.
Pressure distribution and flow streamlines in an open fracture with variable aperture.
Computational Fluid Dynamics Brochure
Commercial and government clients are assisted by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in solving complex water resource supply and contamination problems. Our hydrology staff integrates work products with geochemistry, geology, and geotechnical personnel to meet a wide range of client needs.
We address both applied and theoretical problems using SwRI's facilities and equipment for conducting and developing:
- Laboratory experiments at the bench- and meso-scales
- Hydrogeological field investigations
- State-of-the-science numerical models
Hydrological Services Expertise
SwRI has gained an international recognition for expertise in nonisothermal, multiphase flow and reactive contaminant transport in variably saturated, highly heterogeneous, fractured and nonfractured porous media. Specific areas of expertise include:
- Infiltration and recharge modeling
- Surface-water/groundwater interactions
- Groundwater resource analysis
- Environmental site assessment, including identification of contaminant source location and release history
- Estimation of effective hydraulic properties for heterogeneous and fractured porous media, including development of constitutive theory for predicting relative permeability relations in petroleum reservoirs, aquifers, and the vadose zone
- Stochastic simulation of facies distributions under geologic constraints
- Assessment of subsurface transport in the presence of large process and data uncertainties
- Development of new and robust flow and transport models for managing complex karst aquifers
- Computational fluid dynamics, heat transfer and coupled-process simulations of complex subsurface systems
- Numerical simulation of inert/reactive colloid-facilitated transport in fractured media
- Development of drought management plans
- Monitoring water quality impacts from oil and gas production activities
- Evaluation of regional and local water-budget analyses
Related Terminology
infiltration and recharge • runoff and overland flow • soil physics and multiphase flow • coupled and interfacial processes • aquifer characterization • karst and carbonate rock • salt water intrusion • matrix-fracture interaction • colloid facilitated transport • thermal flow • instrument averaging volume • geostatistics • sensitivity analysis
