A finite volume-multigrid method for flow simulation on stratified porous media on curvilinear co-ordinate systems

This paper presents a numerical study of infiltration processes on stratifi ed porous media. The study is carried out to examine the performance of a f inite volume method on problems with discontinuous solutions due to the tra nsmission conditions in the interfaces. To discretize the problem, a curvil inear co-ordinate system is used. This permits matching the interface with the boundary of the control volumes that interchange fluxes between layers. The use of the multigrid algorithm for the resulting systems of equations allows problems involving a large number of nodes with low computational co st to be solved. Finally, some numerical experiments, which show the capill ary barrier behaviour depending on the material used for the different laye rs and the geometric design of the interface, are presented. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.