ARTICLE IN PRESS

Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092

www.elsevier.com/locate/cageo

A hydrogeophysical synthetic model generator$

Bernard Giroux, Michel Chouteau
Département des génies civil, géologique et des mines, École Polytechnique de Montréal, C.P. 6079, Succ.
Centre-Ville, Montréal, Que., Canada H3C 3A7
Received 20 January 2007; received in revised form 6 July 2007; accepted 15 November 2007

Abstract

HGmod is a computer program that builds on stochastic realizations of porosity fields to derive electrical conductivity,
dielectric permittivity and hydraulic permeability models. The presence of clay, the influence of salinity as well as
temperature of the fluid of imbibition are taken into account in the underlying formulations. The saturated and
unsaturated zones are also considered through the application of a saturation profile on the porosity field. A micro-
geometrical model is used to relate the porosity to the clay fraction. This model also used to derive an expression for the
pore specific surface of the sand–clay mixture. The specific surface is subsequently used to compute the conduction at the
pore surface when building electrical conductivity models. Dielectric permittivity fields are built by successive applications
of either the Hanai–Bruggeman or Maxwell–Garnett mixing models, depending on the relative proportions of sand, clay,
water or air. In addition, the dielectric permittivity of water and clay follow a Cole–Cole behavior. HGmod is therefore a
versatile tool useful to generate synthetic datasets needed to anticipate the geophysical response under specific conditions
and to study hydrogeophysical sensitivity or resolution analysis.
r 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Hydrogeophysics; Modeling; Porosity; Electrical conductivity; Dielectric permittivity

1. Introduction dependent. The discipline of hydrogeophysics

The shallow subsurface is an important reservoir
for groundwater supply. This zone is also used for
the storage of all types of wastes, and is also
exposed to many kinds of contaminants. Ground-
water flow and contaminant transport are much
dependent on the hydrogeological properties of
the medium that are usually complex and scale
$
Source code available at http://geo.polymtl.ca/giroux/
HGmod/. Code available from server at http://www.iamg.org/
CGEditor/index.htm.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 514 340 4711x5233;
fax: +1 514 340 3970.
E-mail address: giroux@geo.polymtl.ca (B. Giroux).
has emerged in the recent years due to the growing
need to characterize and monitor the shallow
subsurface in a non-invasive manner. Particular
fields of study currently addressed are the improve-
ment of the spatial resolution admissible by the
inversion of geophysical data and its connection
with the scale of variation the underlying physical
parameter (Day-Lewis et al., 2005; Hubbard
et al., 1999), the sensitivity of the results to
variations in the physical properties of the subsur-
face (Chang et al., 2006; Furman et al., 2004)
and the integration of geophysical and hydro-
geological measurements (Tronicke and Holliger,
2005).

0098-3004/$ - see front matter r 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cageo.2007.11.006
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
B. Giroux, M. Chouteau / Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092
It is now a common practice for researchers to
test their hypothesis numerically before performing
costly measurements in the field. The usual numer-
ical earth model used by geophysicists is a
construction of the spatial distribution of the
physical parameter measured by the technique
employed. For example, a dielectric permittivity
field with given spatial properties is generated to
model the propagation of radio waves, or a model
of resistivity is built to simulate an electrical
resistivity tomography (ERT) survey. This way of
doing has one serious limitation in that the physical
property of interest is only weakly related to the
underlying hydrogeological parameters (porosity or
permeability). It is therefore difficult to assess
quantitatively the sensitivity of a given geophysical
method to the variation of the hydrogeological
parameters.
In this paper, we present HGmod, a program that
allows the generation of a 2D or 3D distribution of
dielectric permittivity, electrical resistivity and
hydraulic permeability, all derived from a stochastic
realization of a porosity field. These models can be
used with other modeling programs to generate
synthetic datasets. The presence of clay and the
influence of salinity and temperature of the fluid of
imbibition are taken into account for the calculation
of the dielectric permittivity and electrical resistiv-
ity. The saturated and unsaturated zones are
considered through the application of a saturation
profile on the porosity field. For instance, HGmod
can serve to generate different models for one
varying parameter (e.g. salinity or water table level),
in order to generate as many synthetic datasets that
can in turn be used for sensitivity or resolution
analysis.
2. Methodology
2.1. Building a porosity model
Most shallow aquifers are made of unconsoli-
dated granular material with interstice permeability,
as opposed to fractured rocks with fracture perme-
ability. Unconsolidated sediments present stochastic
spatial structures, and their porosity f is adequately
represented by a normal distribution (Freeze, 1975;
Sun and Koch, 1998). Geostatistical simulations
allow one to generate multi-dimensional random
fields.
The FFT-MA simulation algorithm (Le Ravalec
et al., 2000) was implemented to generate 2D or 3D
1081
porosity fields that will serve as the basis for the
calculations. This algorithm was retained for its
simplicity, efficiency and ease of implementation. It
can handle any covariance as long as the field is
stationary (the probability distribution at a fixed
position is the same for all positions, a weak
assumption in this case). This generator, as its name
implies, results from the combination of the moving
average method with the FFT algorithm. The FFT-
MA generator relies on randomness components
drawn in spatial domain. The latter, together with the
discrete covariance term, are efficiently transformed to
the spectral domain with the FFT algorithm, then
merged and inverse transformed to yield the simulated
field. One appealing feature is that the structural
parameters are separated from the random ones. Using
the latter feature, different realizations can efficiently be
produced using the same covariance term and perturb-
ing only the random one. We rely on this feature when
building more that one model.
With the FFT-MA algorithm, however, it is not
possible to directly condition the simulated field to
known data. Nevertheless, this can be done a poster-
iori using simple kriging. A basic implementation of
simple kriging is included in the code to allow this.
Given S the non-conditional simulated porosity field
and conditioning data Z, the conditional simulated
field T is (Chilès and Delfiner, 1999)
T ¼ S þ ½Z  S , (1)
where superscript  stands for simple kriging estima-
tor. Using this approach, the conditioning values are
exactly recovered in the simulated field.
The quality of the realizations obtained with our
implementation of the FFT-MA algorithm is
succinctly examined through one example of a
non-conditional simulation. The covariance model
is composed of an isotropic spherical model with
range 50 and sill 0.9 plus a nugget effect with sill 0.1.
The domain has a size of 1024  1  1024 (2D
models are generated by setting a single grid node in
one of the three spatial dimensions). One hundred
realizations are drawn, for which the average
statistics are given in Table 1. The means of means
and variances are close to their theoretical values (0
and 1, respectively) and dispersion is small. The
simulated univariate distributions are then com-
pared to the expected standard Gaussian distribu-
tion via a quantile–quantile plot (Fig. 1a). Also, the
bivariate distributions are examined through the
simulated variograms (Fig. 1b). In each case, one
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1082 B. Giroux, M. Chouteau / Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092

observes that the average simulated statistics match significantly affect both hydrogeological and
very well the theoretical model. geophysical properties. At this point, it is interesting
Fig. 2 shows four realizations of the porosity field to see how clay content can be taken into
with four different covariance models. In all cases, the account when building a hydrogeophysical model.
mean porosity is 0.25, and the same seed was used to Marion et al. (1992) proposed a micro-geometrical
generate the random term in the simulations. Ex- model for mixtures of sand and clay in which clay is
ponential, hyperbolic and stable covariance functions dispersed in the pore space of the sand matrix.
with ranges ax ¼ 10 m and az ¼ 3 m and a sill C ¼ According to this model, as clay packets fill the pore
4  104 were, respectively, used in Figs. 2a–c, space, the porosity can be related to the clay
whereas a Gaussian covariance function with the fraction Cl by
same ranges and sill and a small nugget effect
(C ¼ 105 ) were used to produce Fig. 2d (see Chilès f ¼ fs  Clð1  fc Þ, (2)
and Delfiner, 1999 for covariance function defini- where fs is the porosity of pure sand and fc is the
tions). Note the similarities in the overall trends of porosity of pure clay. The clay fraction Cl is defined
these realizations. This is due to the decoupling of the here as the volume of room dry clay (i.e. with
structural parameters from the random ones in the associated bound water and macro-porosity) over
FFT-MA algorithm and the use of the same random the volume of room dry sand–clay mixture (Marion
term for all simulations. It should be mentioned that et al., 1992). By specifying values of fs and fc , it is
although only 2D models are presented here, 3D therefore possible to compute a value of Cl at every
models can be built with our program as well. porosity point, such as shown in Fig. 3 (fs ¼ 0:35
and fc ¼ 0:45 were used here). Note that Eq. (2) is
2.1.1. Including a clay fraction valid as long as Clofs . We have restricted the
It is rather common that granular aquifers domain of application of our program to this limit
include a fraction of silt or clay. Clay or silt because soils with larger clay fraction are generally
of limited hydrogeological interests due to their low
Table 1 permeability.
Average statistics of 100 isotropic realizations

Mean of Variance of Mean of Variance of 2.2. Electrical conductivity model

means means variances variances

0.001235 0.001147 1.011419 0.001236

The presence of clay implies that the widely used
formula of Archie (1942) cannot be used to model

QQ plot of Simulated Data vs Std Normal Variogram of Simulated Data

1.2
2.0
1.5 1.0
Simulated Quantiles

1.0
0.8
0.5
Variogram

0.0 0.6

-0.5
0.4
-1.0
-1.5 0.2
-2.0
0.0
-2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Standard Normal Quantiles Distance [m]

Fig. 1. Validation of reproduction of univariate and bivariate distributions, from 100 non-conditional realizations.
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B. Giroux, M. Chouteau / Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092 1083

0 0.31 0 0.31

0.29 0.29
5 5
0.27 0.27
10 10
0.25 0.25
Z [m]

Z [m]
15 0.23 15 0.23

0.21 0.21
20 20
0.19 0.19

25 0.17 25 0.17
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m] X [m]

0 0.31 0 0.31

0.29 0.29
5 5
0.27 0.27
10 10
0.25 0.25
Z [m]

Z [m]

15 0.23 15 0.23

0.21 0.21
20 20
0.19 0.19

25 0.17 25 0.17
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m] X [m]

Fig. 2. Four realizations of porosity field: (a) Experiental covariance, (b) hyperbolic covariance, (c) stable covariance with a ¼ 1=2 and (d)
Gaussian covariance with nugget effect.

the electrical conductivity of the medium. This is 0 0.32

due to the increased surface conduction that occurs
in media with high specific surface such as clay. 5
0.28
Many models were developed to take into account
the effect of surface conduction (Waxman and 0.24
Smits, 1968; de Lima and Sharma, 1990; Pride, 10
1994; Revil, 1999; Tabbagh et al., 2002). In this
Z [m]

0.20
work, the macroscopic model of Pride (1994) is used
15
for that purpose. Pride derived his equations by
0.16
using averaging of the equations known to apply at
the fluid and solid phases, i.e. the microscopic 20
0.12
scale, over a volume larger than the solid grains.
The underlying assumptions are: the fluid is an
ideal electrolyte (concentration less than 1 mol/l), 25 0.08
0 5 10 15 20 25
isotropic model, and the thickness of the double-
X [m]
layer is much less than the radii of curvature of the
solid grains. According to this model, the bulk Fig. 3. Clay fraction model derived from porosity field of Fig. 2a.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
1084 B. Giroux, M. Chouteau / Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092
conductivity s is given by (Pride, 1994; Carcione
et al., 2003)
 
f 2½C em þ ReðC os ðoÞÞ
s¼ n
sf S þ ðS=mÞ, (3)
T L
where f is the porosity; T the tortuosity (for negligible
surface conductivity, the ratio f=T is equal to the
inverse of the electrical formation factor (Pride et al.,
1993)); sf the fluid (ionic) conductivity; S the
saturation; n the saturation exponent; C em the excess
conductance associated with the electro-migration of
double-layer ions; C os the frequency dependent con-
ductance due to electrically induced streaming of the
excess double-layer ions (coined ‘‘electro-osmotic’’ by
Pride); L a geometrical parameter roughly equal to
twice the ratio of volume of pores over surface of pores
(Johnson et al., 1986; Johnson and Sen, 1988).
We have introduced the saturation S in the
original equation of Pride (1994) by multiplying sf
with the saturation index of the second Archie
equation (Schön, 2004). Our formulation is valid as
long as the saturation is high enough to maintain
the double-layer, which is a reasonable working
hypothesis due to the extremely thin thickness of the
double-layer.
The conductivity of a fluid with L ionic species is
(Pride, 1994)
X
L
sf ¼ ðezl Þ2 bl Nl ðS=mÞ, (4)
l¼1
where zl is the valence (ezl represents the net charge
and sign of the ion, e being the electric charge
1:6  1019 C), bl is the mobility and Nl is the bulk
ionic concentration. The mobility can be approxi-
mated by 1=ð6pZf Rl Þ with Zf the fluid viscosity and
Rl the effective ion radius. The viscosity of water is
strongly dependent on temperature. For tempera-
ture in the range of 0–20 1C, the viscosity in
centiPoise is (Weast and Astle, 1980)
 
1301
Zf ¼ 100 exp 2:303
998:333 þ 8:1855ðT  20Þ þ 0:00585ðT  20Þ2
and for the range 20–100 1C
Zf ¼ 1:002 exp
 
1:3272ð20  TÞ  0:001053ðT  20Þ2
 2:303 . 
T þ 105
(6)
Note that the effect of salinity on viscosity is
neglected. Values of effective ion radius R for
sodium and chlorine are, respectively, 0.116 and
0.167 nm. The bulk ionic concentration Nl (in m3 )
is equal to 1000sN a with s the salinity in mol/l and
N a Avogadro’s number ð6:022  1023 mol1 Þ. De-
tails on the computation of C em and C os are given in
Appendix. To derive parameter L, we extend the
model of Marion et al. (1992) to take into account
the specific surface, itself related to L. The specific
surface S is defined here as
Sp
S¼ ðm1 Þ, (7)
Vh
where Sp is the surface of the pores and V h is the
volume of the host matrix. From the definition of
porosity (f ¼ V p =V with V p the volume of pores
and V the total volume), Eqs. (2) and (7), it can be
shown that
S ¼ Cl Sc þ ð1  ClÞSs , (8)
where Sc is the specific surface of pure clay and Ss
is the specific surface of pure sand. Then, from the
definitions of specific surface and porosity and
approximating L  2V p =S p , we get
2f
L ðmÞ. (9)
Sð1  fÞ
2.3. Dielectric permittivity model
Druchinin (2000) proposed models to compute
the dielectric permittivity of sandy–clayey soils with
various clay contents. The soil is considered to
consist of four phases: air, water, clay and sand, in
volume proportions of fa , fw , fc and fs , respec-
tively. Depending on the proportion of each
constituent, the models consist in successive appli-
cations of Hanai–Bruggeman or Maxwell–Garnett

 3:30233 (5)
models. In the mixing model of Hanai–Bruggeman,
the permittivity of the mixture m can be obtained
from (Schön, 2004)
 W
i  m h
1  fi ¼ , (10)
i  h m
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B. Giroux, M. Chouteau / Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092 1085

where h is the permittivity of the host medium, i is the
permittivity of the inclusion, fi is the volume fraction
of the inclusion and W ¼ 13 for spherical inclusion. The
term of interest m in Eq. (10) cannot be isolated. To
solve the system, we use a modified version of Powell’s
method (Press et al., 1992) to minimize the norm
   W 
 i  m h
 
1  fi  .
 i  h m  used in the first step. In the last two cases, the
In the Maxwell–Garnett model, the permittivity of the
mixture is (Sihvola, 2000)
fi P
i  h =h þ N j ði  h Þ
m ¼ h þ h 3 j¼x;y;z
f P
1  i j¼x;y;z N j ði  h Þ=h þ N j ði  h Þ
3
(11)
where N j is the depolarization factor in j direction. The
depolarization factors for flattened ellipsoidal inclu-
sions with axes ð1; x; xÞ are used in our specific case (for
details see Sihvola, 2000).
The following four scenarios proposed by Dru-
chinin (2000) are considered to compute the
effective permittivity of the soil. In the first two
cases, there is no clay in the model. The first
scenario corresponds to a low moisture situation
(fw o0:11). In this case, the procedure is as follows:
(1) use the Maxwell–Garnett model to compute
the permittivity of the sand and water
mixture with water taken as the inclusion
material;
(2) use the Hanai–Bruggeman model to compute
the permittivity of mixture 1 and air where air is
considered the inclusion material.
The second procedure, for (fw 40:11), is the same as
above except that the Hanai–Bruggeman model is
amount of clay is considered small. In the following,
mixture 1 stands for the water/clay mixture, and
mixture 2 stands for the combination of mixture 1
with sand. The third scenario is when fc þ fs ofw ,
and the following steps are applied:
,
(1) use the Maxwell–Garnett model to compute the
permittivity of the water and clay mixture with
clay taken as the inclusion material;
(2) use the Maxwell–Garnett model to compute the
permittivity of the sand and mixture 1 combination
with mixture 1 taken as the inclusion material;
(3) use the Hanai–Bruggeman model to compute
the permittivity of mixture 2 and air where air is
considered the inclusion material.
The last case is when fc þ fs 4fw , and the steps are
as following:
(1) use the Hanai–Bruggeman model to compute
the permittivity of the clay and water mixture
with water taken as the inclusion material;

Permeability [mD] Permeability [mD]

0 175 0 70

150 60
5 5

125 50
10 10
Z [m]

Z [m]

100 40
15 15
75 30

20 20
50 20

25 25 25 10
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m]
X [m]

Fig. 4. Hydraulic permeability fields derived from porosity model of Fig. 2a.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
1086 B. Giroux, M. Chouteau / Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092

σ [S/m] σ [S/m]
0 0.020 0 0.031

0.019
0.030
5 0.018 5
0.029
0.017
10 10 0.028
0.016
Z [m]

Z [m]
0.015 0.027
15 15
0.014
0.026
20 0.013 20
0.025
0.012

25 0.011 25 0.024
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m] X [m]

Re(ε) Re(ε)
0 11.0 0 19.0
18.5
10.5
5 5 18.0
10.0 17.5
9.5 17.0
10 10
16.5
Z [m]

Z [m]

9.0
16.0
15 8.5 15
15.5

8.0 15.0
20 20 14.5
7.5
14.0
25 7.0 25 13.5
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m] X [m]

Im(ε) Im(ε)
0 0.90 0 5.90

5.85
5 0.75 5

5.80
10 0.60 10
Z [m]

Z [m]

5.75
15 0.45 15
5.70

20 0.30 20
5.65

25 0.15 25 5.60
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m] X [m]

Fig. 5. Influence of clay content on electrical conductivity and relative dielectric permittivity: (a), (c), (e) Clean sand and (b), (d), (f) Sand
with clay content.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
B. Giroux, M. Chouteau / Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092
(2) use the Hanai–Bruggeman model to compute
the permittivity of mixture 1 and sand, where
sand is considered as the inclusion material;
(3) use the Hanai–Bruggeman model to compute
the permittivity of mixture 1 and air, where air is
considered as the inclusion material.
Druchinin (2000) suggests using a value of 35 for the
effective axial ratio x to compute the depolarization
factor when applying the Maxwell–Garnett model.
In our implementation, the effective dielectric
permittivity of water w and of clay c follow a
Cole–Cole behavior:
0  1 is
 ¼ 1 þ þ , (12)
1  ðiotÞq o
where 1 is the optical dielectric permittivity, 0 is
the static dielectric permittivity, t is the relaxation
time and q is the Cole–Cole distribution parameter
(Hasted, 1973). Using this model, dispersion is
considered to first order (i.e. inter-facial effects are
ignored). The properties of water are dependent on
temperature, and this dependence is taken into
account when computing w . The term 0 has the
following dependence on temperature T (Hasted,
1973)
0 ðTÞ ¼ 87:74  0:40008T þ 9:398
104 T 2  1:41  106 T 3 , (13)
where the temperature is in Celsius. The dependence
of the temperature on 1 and on q can be found in
Table 2.2 of Hasted (1973). Besides, the influence of
concentration on the permittivity of water is
relatively small compared with the influence on the
conductivity (Schön, 2004), and only the effect on 0
is considered at this point. The correction term is
(Olhoeft, 1981)
0 ¼ 0 ðTÞ  13s þ 1:065s2  0:03006s3 , (14)
where the concentration s is in mol/l.
2.4. Hydraulic permeability model
In his development, Pride (1994) used volume
averaging to define three parameters related to the
pore-space geometry: the ‘‘L parameter’’, the
tortuosity T and the permeability k. His definitions
are consistent with the previous work of Johnson et
al. (1986, 1987). All three parameters are linked to
1087
porosity through a dimensionless number
fL2
m¼ , (15)
Tk
which can be assumed constant for a given material
(Johnson et al., 1986; Charlaix et al., 1988).
Charlaix et al. (1988) obtained experimentally
values of m  8 for fused glass beads, and m  10
for crushed glass. A value of m ¼ 8 can be obtained
theoretically for a cylindrical tube (Pride, 1994). We
have added the possibility to save the hydraulic
permeability field obtained from Eq. (15) and the
simulated porosity field, for user defined values of
T and m.
The permeability can also be expressed in terms
of specific surface, porosity and tortuosity through
the well-known Kozeny–Carman (K–C) relation-
ship. The relation is in this case (Schön, 2004)
f3
k¼ , (16)
wð1  fÞ2 S2 T2
where w is the so-called Kozeny–Carman shape
factor. w is equal to 2 for a circular cross-section
(see Schön, 2004 for values of w for other simple
shapes). We have compared the permeabilities
obtained with Eqs. (15) and (16) for a clean sand
model (porosity field of Fig. 2a). The models are
shown in Fig. 4. There is roughly a factor of 2.5
between the two, with lower values for the K–C
model. This was observed by Raffensperger and
Ferrell (1991), who applied the K–C model to
experimental data and found predicted permeabil-
ities 2–3 orders of magnitude lower than measured
Salinity [ppm]
0 3900
3400
5
2900
10
Z [m]
2400
15
1900
20
1400
25 900
0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m]
Fig. 6. Example of user defined salinity model.
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σ [S/m] σ [S/m]
0 0.020 0 0.07
0.019
0.06
5 0.018 5

0.017 0.05
10 10
0.016
Z [m]

Z [m]
0.04
0.015
15 15
0.014 0.03

20 0.013 20
0.02
0.012
25 0.011 25 0.01
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m] X [m]

Re(ε) Re(ε)
0 11.0 0 11.0

10.5 10.5
5 5
10.0 10.0

10 9.5 10 9.5
Z [m]

Z [m]

9.0 9.0
15 8.5 15 8.5

8.0 8.0
20 20
7.5 7.5

25 7.0 25 7.0
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m] X [m]

Im(ε) Im(ε)
0 0.90 0 0.90

5 0.75 5 0.75

10 0.60 10 0.60
Z [m]

Z [m]

15 0.45 15 0.45

20 0.30 20 0.30

25 0.15 25 0.15
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m] X [m]

Fig. 7. Influence of salinity on electrical conductivity and relative dielectric permittivity: (a), (c), (e) Constant salinity at 900 ppm and (b),
(d), (f) Salinity model of Fig. 6.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
B. Giroux, M. Chouteau / Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092
values. They attributed the difference to the
presence of dead-end pores and the importance of
flow through large conducting channels. Chapuis
and Aubertin (2003) discuss in length the influence
of the specific surface on permeability estimation
through the K–C relation.
3. Examples
3.1. Influence of clay content
We have presented in Section 2.1.1 how clay
could be incorporated in the model, and how the
clay fraction could be translated in terms of specific
surface in Section 2.2. By default, specific surface
values of 2:65  105 and 5  108 are used for Ss and
Sc , respectively (Santamarina et al., 2002). It is,
however, possible to model the conductivity of a
clean sand aquifer by giving a value of Sc equal to
that of Ss . In this section, the effect of clay is
illustrated by comparing the conductivity and
permittivity models obtained in clean sand and with
the above default values of specific surface.
The porosity model of Fig. 2a and clay fraction
model derived from Eq. (2) (Fig. 3) are used for this
example. The Cole–Cole parameters for the relative
permittivity of clay are as following: 0 ¼ 30,
1 ¼ 20, t ¼ 108 and q ¼ 0:9. The electrolyte is
composed of water and Naþ and Cl ions at
900 ppm concentration, at a temperature of 15 1C.
The porosity field is fully saturated. The electrical
conductivity fields obtained are shown in Figs. 5a
and b. The presence of clay has for effect to increase
the conductivity in low porosity zones, where the
clay content is higher. The overall trend is then
contrary to what is seen for clean sands. The relative
dielectric permittivity models are shown in Figs.
5c–f. The high values of 0 and 1 for clay has for
effect to increase the overall permittivity values, as
seen in the figures. There is also a stronger increase
of the imaginary part owing to the contribution of
the increased conductivity.
3.2. Influence of salinity
Let us consider next the effect of variation of
salinity. Recall that salinity influences the electric
conductivity (Eq. (4)) through the bulk ionic
concentration N, as well as the dielectric permit-
tivity according to Eq. (14).
By default in our program the salinity is constant
for all cells. However, we have included the
1089
possibility to define a salinity model that is
independent of the porosity field. This feature can
be used to simulate approximately models at
different times during a saline tracer infiltration
test. The salinity model is kriged from points
provided by the user. Fig. 6 depicts a hypothetical
salinity model that is used to illustrate the influence
of salinity on the conductivity and permittivity
models.
Consider the porosity field shown in Fig. 2a, on
which the application of a constant salinity model
(900 ppm) is compared to the application of the
model of Fig. 6. In both cases, the porosity field is
fully saturated with an electrolyte composed of
water and Naþ and Cl ions, at 15 1C. The effect of
clay is not considered here. The conductivity and
permittivity fields obtained are shown in Fig. 7. The
effect of increased salinity on conductivity and on
the imaginary part of permittivity is very strong as
expected. A slight increase of the real part of
permittivity is also observed in Fig. 7d.
3.3. Influence of temperature and saturation
As a third example, the effects of temperature and
saturation are illustrated. The clayey sand, low
salinity model defined in paragraph 3.1 is compared
to a model with exactly the same parameters except
0
1 Vadose zone
2
Z [m]
3
4 Capillary zone
5
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Saturation
Fig. 8. Example of user defined saturation profile model.
Defining parameters are minimum and maximum values of
saturation, capillary fringe thickness and water table depth.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
1090 B. Giroux, M. Chouteau / Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092

σ [S/m] σ25°C - σ15°C [S/m]

0 0.038 0 0.007

0.003
5 5
0.030
-0.001
10 10
Z [m]

Z [m]
0.022 -0.005
15 15
-0.009
0.014
20 20
-0.013

25 0.006 25 -0.017
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m] X [m]

Re(ε) Re(ε)25°C - Re(ε)15°C

0 17.5 0 0

-2
5 15.5 5

-4
10 13.5 10
Z [m]

Z [m]

-6
15 11.5 15
-8

20 9.5 20
-10

25 7.5 25 -12
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m] X [m]

Im(ε) Im(ε)25°C - Im(ε)15°C

0 7.2 0 1.5
1.0
5 5 0.5
5.9 0.0
-0.5
10 10
-1.0
Z [m]

Z [m]

4.6
-1.5
15 15
-2.0
3.3 -2.5
20 20 -3.0
-3.5
25 2.0 25 -4.0
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
X [m] X [m]

Fig. 9. Influence of temperature on electrical conductivity and relative dielectric permittivity. Model is defined in Section 3.1 (clayey sand,
low salinity), with an increase of temperature from 15 to 25 1C and with an added saturation profile (see text for details). (a), (c), (e) 25 1C
and (b), (d), (f) difference.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
B. Giroux, M. Chouteau / Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092 1091

for temperature which is increased from 15 to 25 1C. Acknowledgments

A simple saturation profile is also applied to the
porosity field of the high temperature model. The The authors acknowledge the financial support of
shape of this saturation profile is defined by three NSERC. The first author is grateful to E. Gloaguen
parameters (residual saturation, thickness of capil- for fruitful discussions on geostatistical simulation.
lary fringe and depth of water table) and follows the
shape of an error function in the capillary zone, as Appendix A. Computation of C em and C os
shown in Fig. 8. For illustrative purpose, the
thickness of the capillary fringe was set to exag- For a fluid with L ionic species, the excess
gerated value of 3 m in this example. The water conductance associated with the electro-migration
table is in this case at 5 m, and the values of of double-layer ions is (Pride, 1994)
saturation in the vadose zone and below the water
XL    
table are 0.3 and 1, respectively. The model of van 2 ezl z
C em ¼ 2d ðezl Þ bl Nl exp  1 ,
Genuchten (1980) is also implemented in HGmod. l¼1
2kT
In this model, the saturation profile follows the (A.1)
following function:
where
SðhÞ ¼ ½1 þ ðahÞn m , (17)
 d is the Debye length, which is a measure of the
where h is the pressure head and a, m and n are thickness of the diffuse double-layer and which is
empirical parameters. defined as
The results for 15 1C are shown above, in
Figs. 5b, d and f (for fully saturated soils). Fig. 9 1 XL
ðezl Þ2 Nl
shows the conductivity and permittivity for 25 1C, as ¼ , (A.2)
d2  k kT
l¼1 0 f
well as the differences between the 25 and 15 1C
results. As shown in Fig. 9, the effect of increased with 0 the dielectric permittivity of vacuum, kf
temperature is to slightly increase the conductivity the dielectric constant of the fluid, k Boltzmann’s
and imaginary part of permittivity in the saturated constant ð1:38  1023 J=KÞ, and T the tempera-
zone. The real part of permittivity is virtually ture in Kelvin;
unchanged for this 10 1C difference in temperature.  z is the zeta potential (in Volt), for which the
In the unsaturated zone, the reduced water content expression 0:008 þ 0:026 log10 s can be used
has a marked effect on conductivity and permittiv- (Carcione et al., 2003), in which s is salt
ity, leading to a decrease of both, as expected. concentration in mol/l.

For the same solution, the conductance due to

4. Conclusion electrically induced streaming (convection) of the
excess double-layer ions (the electro-osmotic con-
We have presented a computer program that ductance) is
permits to build a 2D or 3D grid model of  1
dielectric permittivity, electrical resistivity and ð0 kf zÞ2 P 2i3=2 d
C os ¼ 1 , (A.3)
hydraulic permeability, all derived from a stochastic 2dZf Pd
realization of a porosity field. The program is where
written in C++ and the source code is available
at http:geo.polmtl.ca/giroux/HGmod. The pro-  P is a simplification term equal to
gram is relatively simple and modular, and    
can easily accommodate extensions. Anticipated 8kTd 2 X ezl z
P¼ LNl exp   1 , (A.4)
future additions are the inclusion of water flow 0 kf z2 l¼1 2kT
modeling capabilities to generate snapshots of the
properties at various times that can simulate an
infiltration experiments, for example. We also
 d is the viscous skin depth, equal to
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
investigate to include dispersive complex conductiv- Zf
ity so as to model the subsurface response to d¼ , (A.5)
orf
induced polarization.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
1092 B. Giroux, M. Chouteau / Computers & Geosciences 34 (2008) 1080–1092
with o the angular frequency and rf the fluid
density.
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