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In the present study, method of temporal moments has been used to analyse the transport characteristics of reactive solute along fracture in a coupled fracture-skin-matrix system. In order to obtain the concentration distribution within the fracture, a system of coupled partial differential equations for fracture, fractureskin and rock-matrix has been solved numerically in a pseudo two-dimensional domain using implicit finite difference method. Subsequently, lower order temporal moments of solute have been computed from the concentration distribution to analyse the transport characteristics of solutes in the fracture. This study has been done by considering an inlet boundary condition of constant continuous source in a single fracture. The effect of various fracture-skin parameters like porosity, thickness and diffusion coefficient on the transport of solutes have been studied by doing sensitivity analyses. The effect of nonlinear sorption and radioactive decay of solutes have also been analysed by carrying out simulations for different sorption intensities and decay constants. Numerical results suggested that the presence of fracture-skin significantly influences the transport characteristics of reactive solutes along the fracture.

This paper presents an analysis using temporal moments to study multi-species radionuclide transport along a single fracture with variable fracture aperture in a fractureskin-matrix system. In the present study, a decay chain having three elements is considered and transport of each member in the decay chain is modeled by solving a coupled system of partial differential equations for fracture, fracture-skin, and rock matrix using explicit finite difference method. Having obtained the concentration distribution, lower order temporal moments of radionuclide distribution are computed to analyze the effective velocity and macro-dispersion coefficient of radionuclides in the fracture. In the present study, effect of varying fracture aperture on transport characteristics of radionuclides is also analyzed. It is found that the fracture aperture variation profile has significant impact on radionuclide distribution along the fracture. Sensitivity analysis is carried out in a fracture-skin-matrix system with sinusoidal fracture aperture to study the effect of various parameters like fracture aperture thickness, fracture-skin porosity, fracture-skin diffusion coefficient, flow rate, radioactive decay constant, and Freundlich sorption isotherm exponent on transport characteristics of radionuclide. The results suggest that the above mentioned parameters significantly influence concentration, distribution, mobility, and effective macro-dispersion coefficient of radionuclides along the fracture.

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