Solute transport through a deforming porous medium

Abstract Solute transport through a porous medium is typically modelled assuming the porous medium is rigid. However, many applications exist where the porous medium is deforming, including, municipal landfill liners, mine tailings dams, and land subsidence. In this paper, mass balance laws are used to derive the flow and transport equations for a deforming porous medium. The equations are derived in both spatial and material co‐ordinate systems. Solute transport through an engineered landfill liner is used as an illustrative example to show the differences between the theory for a rigid porous medium, and small and large deformation analysis of a deforming porous medium. It is found that the large deformation model produces shorter solute breakthrough times, followed by the small deformation model, and then the rigid porous medium model. It is also found that it is important to include spatial and temporal void ratio variations in the large deformation analysis. It is shown that a non‐linear large deformation model may greatly reduce the solute breakthrough time, compared to a standard transport analysis typically employed by environmental engineers. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.