Application of Monte Carlo Simulation to Find Travel Time of Groundwater in the Iraqi Western Desert

Abstract

In this study, a computerized mathematical method represented by Monte Carlo simulation was used to predict the travel time of the groundwater flow in the Iraqi western desert. During the run of the simulations, all the hydraulic parameters of Darcy’s Law were fixed but the hydraulic conductivity. The input data of the hydraulic conductivity is compared to the triangular distribution function to find the best number of iteration to run the simulations. The results showed that an iteration number of 5000 was enough to achieve best match between the input data of the hydraulic conductivity and the fitted distribution function. In addition, the estimated travel time of the groundwater flow is broadly varied through the entire area and ranges from 1983 years to 113 741 years based on 10 000 m of travel distance. Furthermore, hydraulic conductivity of the aquifer has high impact on the estimated travel time of the groundwater flow. However, head difference of groundwater elevation among the selected wells considerably influences the expected travel time of the groundwater flow.