Application of 2‐d random generators to the study of solute transport in fractures

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Abstract
Two fields with random aperture distribution and different spatial structures are taken as models to study solute transport in fractures. One network has non‐vanishing long range correlations and represents a fractal pattern. The other one has a finite correlation length and an exponential covariance function. Based on these fields, two physical fracture models were produced and used to record the movement of a coloured solute by means of a CCD camera. The pictures obtained were analyzed with image processing methods. A front tracking algorithm shows that the growth law of the frontal variance is a power law of time with the exponent depending on the Hurst coefficient of the aperture distribution in the case of the fractal pattern, while it is a linear function of time for the case of the finite correlation length.