Section: Research Program

Numerical models applied to hydrogeology and physics

The team Sage is strongly involved in numerical models for hydrogeology and physics. There are many scientific challenges in the area of groundwater simulations. This interdisciplinary research is very fruitful with cross-fertilizing subjects. For example, high performance simulations were very helpful for finding out the asymptotic behaviour of the plume of solute transported by advection-dispersion. Numerical models are necessary to understand flow transfer in fractured media.

The team develops stochastic models for groundware simulations. Numerical models must then include Uncertainty Quantification methods, spatial and time discretization. Then, the discrete problems must be solved with efficient algorithms. The team develops parallel algorithms for complex numerical simulations and conducts performance analysis. Another challenge is to run multiparametric simulations. They can be multiple samples of a non intrusive Uncertainty Quantification method, or multiple samples of a stochastic method for inverse problems, or multiple samples for studying the sensitivity to a given model parameter. Thus these simulations are more or less independent and are well-suited to grid computing but each simulation requires powerful CPU and memory resources.

A strong commitment of the team is to develop the scientific software platform H2OLab for numerical simulations in heterogeneous hydrogeology.