High order Godunov mixed methods on tetrahedral meshes for density driven flow simulations in porous media

Two-dimensional Godunov mixed methods have been shown to be effective for the numerical solution of density-dependent flow and transport problems in groundwater even when concentration gradients are high and the process is dominated by density effects. This class of discretization approaches solves the flow equation by means of the mixed finite element method, thus guaranteeing mass conserving velocity fields, and discretizes the transport equation by mixed finite element and finite volumes techniques combined together via appropriate time splitting. In this paper, we extend this approach to three dimensions employing tetrahedral meshes and introduce a spatially variable time stepping procedure that improves computational efficiency while preserving accuracy by adapting the time step size according to the local Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) constraint. Careful attention is devoted to the choice of a truly three-dimensional limiter for the advection equation in the time-splitting technique, so that to preserve second order accuracy in space (in the sense that linear functions are exactly interpolated). The three-dimensional Elder problem and the saltpool problem, recently introduced as a new benchmark for testing three-dimensional density models, provide assessments with respect to accuracy and reliability of this numerical approach.