Contaminant transport in an unsaturated soil: laboratory tests and numerical simulation model as procedure for parameters evaluation

In this paper, lab tests coupled to a semi-pilot test section are used to derive data for the calibration of a numerical model. The paper is aimed at proposing a set of experiments, which can be used to calibrate a numerical model before using it on defined soils. The complexity of the phenomenon of transport of reactive pollutants in soil has to be faced in the most complete way. The different behaviour of soil after wet/dry cycles with respect to the fluidodynamic characteristics and the importance to consider the local biomass behaviour in case of organic contaminant has been underlined. An optimal approach has to take into account all the different components and here a simple series of experimental procedure is presented. The sensitivity analysis of the numerical model has shown that its results are not so much dependent on the classical numerical aspects (time or space increments) but mainly on a set of parameters related to soil structure which must then be derived through a good calibration. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.