ISSN:
1745-6584
Source:
Blackwell Publishing Journal Backfiles 1879-2005
Topics:
Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
,
Geosciences
Notes:
A refined Monte Carlo (MC) simulation procedure and an Effective Medium Approximation (EMA) are presented for solving the stochastic subsurface flow problem. The refined MC simulation procedure uses analytical means to estimate the sample size by controlling the error incurred in using the sample average in place of its population mean at a chosen confidence level for the pressure head. Also, an unbiased estimator of the pressure head that takes advantage of its correlation with the saturated conductivity to reduce its variance is proposed. This reduced variance results in a smaller width of uncertainty about the predicted pressure head thereby improving the precision. The EMA permits one to solve the stochastic subsurface flow problem in a single run to generate the expected pressure head field with the aid of a field-scale effective hydraulic conductivity that has a form similar to the Gardner equation. Both the MC and the EMA approaches perform well when applied to example problems taken from the literature.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6584.1994.tb00932.x
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