9311559 Ahlfeld This is an award to support research, the objective of which is to evaluate a numerical method for the design of hydraulic controls that affect the movement of contaminated groundwater during procedures to isolate, contain or decontaminate the water. The method proposed consists of a computationally efficient approach to combining simulation of both groundwater flow and contaminant transport with optimization techniques. The novel feature of the approach the investigator is taking lies in the use of an iterative scheme in which the computationally-easy hydraulic control problem is solved repeatedly and at each iteration, the constraints of the hydraulic model are modified by feedback information provided by solution of the contaminant transport model. Significantly large amounts of financial and human resources are being used to address the decontamination of groundwater resulting from indiscriminate placement of contaminants in landfills. This research is expected to provide a more efficient way of designing field systems for decontamination of contaminated groundwater aquifers than is now possible using current computing technology. ***
