Simulating advective-dispersive transport in groundwater: an accurate finite difference model

Finite difference models (FDMs) may provide oscillatory results when employed to predict contaminant transport in groundwater. The oscillation is usually avoided by adapting upwind methods. The upwind methods are reported to introduce large artificial dispersion. An improved FDM has been developed to provide oscillation free results with the introduction of minimum artificial dispersion. The improvement has been achieved by developing an expression of the minimum artificial dispersion needed to provide accurate results. The improved FDM provides results in excellent agreement with the analytical solution. Further, the improved FDM can easily be extended to two- or three-dimensional problems.