Shock Wave Through Deformable Saturated Porous Media

  Shaul Sorek
Department of Environmental Hydrology & Microbiology
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

We developed the theory concerning the onset of an abrupt pressure change causing the propagation of compaction waves through a saturated deformable porous medium, yielding the motion of solutes through a variable density Newtonian fluid. A simplified characteristic solution of a one spatial dimension (1D) concerning the formulation of a traveling wave provided the tool to investigate the translation extent of the solute under different application scenarios.

A set-up of 1D shock-tube experimental laboratory and limited field experiments confirmed the findings of the characteristic solution

Further elaboration accounted also for the macroscopic mass and momentum balance equations of an elastic porous matrix, and for Forchheimer terms addressing the exchange of inertia through the microscopic fluid-solid interface. The 1D version concerning the fluid, solute and matrix was solved numerically implementing the Total Variation Diminishing (TVD) scheme.

The efficiency of extracting solute mass was assessed on a ratio between pumping using an approximate analytical solution following Darcy’s equation, and TVD numerical simulations addressing the emitting of an expansion wave.


Prof. Shaul Sorek is affiliated with the department of Environmental Hydrology & Microbiology, Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at the Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev, Israel.

In 1972 he got his B.Sc. in Mechanical Eng. at BGU, in Mechanical Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (IIT), in 1976 he got his M.Sc. (thesis:  Using Finite Element Technique for Solving Problems Formulated by Hamilton's Principle) and in 1980 his D.Sc. (thesis: Friction Forces and Stresses in Moving Porous Media).

During 1981 to 1983 he did his PostDoc in the dept. of Hydrology & Water Resources at the University of Arizona. During 1983 to 1984 he worked as a scientist in TAHAL – Consulting Engineers, Israel and during 1984 to 1987 he joined the department of Biomedical Engineering at IIT as a senior research associate. Since 1988 he is affiliated with BGU where he was at two different periods the head of his department.

His research fields concern the development of models in: Numerical methods: Transport phenomena in heterogeneous media; Shock waves through porous media; Decision support systems for water resources.