• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.42 no.10
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• pp.891-896
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• 2009

The puff models have been developed to simulate the advection-diffusion processes of dredging suspended solids, either alone or in combination with Eulerian models. Computational efficiency and accuracy are of prime importance in designing these hybrid approaches to simulate a pollutant discharge, and we characterize two relatively simple Lagrangian techniques in this regard: forward Gaussian puff tracking (FGPT), and backward Gaussian puff tracking (BGPT). FGPT and BGPT offer dramatic savings in computational expense, but their applicability is limited by accuracy concerns in the presence of spatially variable flow or diffusivity fields or complex no-flux or open boundary conditions. For long simulations, particle and/or puff methods can transition to an Eulerian model if appropriate, since the relative computational expense of Lagrangian methods increases with time for continuous sources. Although we focus on simple Lagrangian models that are not suitable to all environmental applications, many of the implementation and computational efficiency concerns outlined herein would also be relevant to using higher order particle and puff methods to extend the near field.