%0 Journal Article %A Das, Samir K. %A Warke, A. S. %A Gorla, R.S.R. %D 2007 %I Begell House %N 3 %P 210-223 %R 10.1615/InterJFluidMechRes.v34.i3.20 %T Qualitative Study to Assess the Effect of a Subsurface Barrier on Contaminant Transport in Groundwater: Computation of Moments %U https://www.dl.begellhouse.com/journals/71cb29ca5b40f8f8,7646d83d07bfe37d,43fc2c372b04bb03.html %V 34 %X This paper describes a numerical solution of solute transport in a hypothetical, homogeneous, isotropic aquifer under constant seepage velocity where the contaminant source is located at the bottom left-hand model boundary with finite length. On applying the alternate direction implicit method, the governing unsteady advective-dispersive equation is solved to obtain the time evolution of the contaminant plume for two scenarios: with the absence of a subsurface barrier and with the presence of a subsurface barrier at dimensionless distance X = 1.0 or 2.6. Model simulations are carried out for up to 16 years to assess the long-term effect, wherein we employ the method of moments to study important statistical parameters such as central moment, coefficients of skewness, and kurtosis. We approximate the mean concentration distribution by applying Edgeworth's asymptotic series for non-Gaussian curves involving Hermite polynomials. The forward displacement of centroid with time, and deviations of the mean concentration distribution from Gaussianity have been examined in both scenarios. %8 2007-06-06