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Onset of thermohaline convection in a cavernous aquifer
Author(s) -
Rubin Hillel
Publication year - 1976
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/wr012i002p00141
Subject(s) - aquifer , geology , convection , turbulence , geothermal gradient , laminar flow , thermohaline circulation , mechanics , geophysics , plane (geometry) , streamlines, streaklines, and pathlines , petrology , geomorphology , groundwater , geotechnical engineering , physics , geometry , climatology , mathematics
In some groundwater aquifers, geothermal activity may lead to thermal convection. In such cases, very often saline hot water is transferred from the deep layers of the aquifer into the upper layers. There is an hypothesis that such a mechanism does exist in the deep regions of the Floridan aquifer. However, the deep zone of the Floridan aquifer is extremely cavernous. Therefore even very slow motions may lead to an intensive dispersion of soluted materials and heat as well as to turbulent effects demonstrated by the invalidity of the laminar Darcy law. In this study all these effects and their connection with the onset of thermohaline convection were investigated. It was found possible to define in the field a plane where applied perturbations are the most disturbing to the flow field. In this plane, convection motions initiate. This plane forms an angle θ c with the unperturbed velocity vector. Angle θ c varies according to flow conditions between 0° and 90°. Approaches were developed for the determination of instability criteria for different regions of the Reynolds number.