Particle Tracking-Reference

The MIKE SHE Particle Tracking (PT) module is an alternative description of solute transport. PT calculates the location of a number of particles at every time step. The particles are displaced individually in the three-dimensional, saturated groundwater zone (SZ). The movement of each particle is com­posed of a deterministic part, where the particle is moved according to the local groundwater velocity calculated by the MIKE SHE, and a stochastic part, where the particle is moved randomly based on the local dispersion coefficients.

The PT module is a part of the MIKE SHE Advection Dispersion module and many of the same equations are used. For example, basically the same gov­erning equation and the exchange of data with the MIKE SHE water move­ment simulation is similar in both modules. Therefore, you may find MIKE SHE AD Technical Reference a good source of additional information.

The PT module is typically used to delineate capture zones, upstream zones, and to determine groundwater age