RichardsFoam2: A new version of RichardsFoam devoted to the modelling of the vadose zone

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cpc.2015.07.009
• Publication Date: 2015-07-29T18:00:19Z
• Authors: Laurent Orgogozo
• Keywords: [INFO.INFO-MS] Computer Science [cs]/Mathematical Software [cs.MS]; Evapotranspiration; [SDU.STU.AG] Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Applied geology; Rain; 0207 environmental engineering; Heterogeneous soils; Richards equation; OpenFOAM®; 02 engineering and technology; [SDU.STU.AG]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Applied geology; [INFO.INFO-MS]Computer Science [cs]/Mathematical Software [cs.MS]

RichardsFoam2 is an updated version of the OpenFOAM® solver RichardsFoam, presented in Orgogozo et al., Comput. Phys. Commun. 2014. The new features are the following: (i) The direct handling of fully heterogeneous porous media, with all the van Genuchten parameters defined as spatially varying scalar fields. (ii) The computation of the density of water flux at each face of the mesh cells, which allows the implementation of fixed water flux (e.g.: rain flux) boundary conditions. (iii) The integration in the water flow resolution of the actual evapotranspiration within the root zone, computed on the basis of the potential evapotranspiration. These new features allow to deal with the hydrology of real (i.e.: heterogeneous) soils in natural conditions, submitted to rain and evapotranspiration. Thus it considerably broadens the field of applicability of the OpenFOAM® solver for Richards equation. The description of the elements contained in this release may be found in the readMe file. In RichardsFoam2_presentation.pdf, one will find a more detailed description of the new features offered by RichardsFoam2 (equations, descriptions of the proposed test cases,…,…).