Anomalous Transport in Random Fracture Networks

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Abstract
We show that dominant aspects of contaminant (particle) transport in random fracture networks—non-Gaussian propagation—result from subtle features of the steady flow-field distribution through the network. This is an outcome of a new theory, based on a continuous time random walk formalism, structured to retain the key space-time correlations of contaminants as they are advected across each fracture segment. Particle tracking simulations on these networks exhibit the same non-Gaussian profiles, demonstrating quantitative agreement with the theory.