Dimensionless characterization of salt intrusion benchmark scenarios in anisotropic media

© 2014 Elsevier Inc. The governing equations of salt intrusion scenarios (the Henry benchmark problem in hydrogeology) is discriminately nondimensionalized to derive the dimensionless groups which define the steady state patterns of iso-concentration and iso-stream function lines, assuming that both hydraulic conductivity and permeability are not isotropic. The use of discrimination leads to lowest number of dimensionless groups, which have inherent physical characteristics that those derived from classical procedures do not have. The new discriminated groups have a clear physical meaning in terms of balance between quantities that counteract the problem in the applied domain; in addition, they are of an order of magnitude of unity. Numerical simulations by the network method are presented to discuss the worthiness of Henry's problem on the basis of these results.