Defining Watch Groups for the Fracture Network

Watch Groups are groups of pipes for which the total mass through-flux will be output. Each Watch Group can be thought of as a window within the network, with the rate of flux through the window being provided as an output.

The purpose of Watch Groups is to allow the analyst to view the movement of contaminant masses across internal boundaries in the network, such as the interfaces between geological strata or fault zones.

In order to enable Watch Groups, you must first select the Number of Watch Groups you wish to define in the main Network pathway A transport pathway element that provides a computationally efficient way to simulate large, complex networks of one-dimensional conduits in order to describe contaminant transport through fractured rock systems. dialog:

You can define up to 999 Watch Groups.

You must then assign pipes in the network to Watch Groups. There are two ways to do this.

The first method to assign pipes to Watch Groups is via the "Sink" column in the Fracture Network A complex network of one-dimensional conduits used by a Network Pathway to describe contaminant transport through fractured rock systems. definition dialog (accessed via the Edit Fracture Network... button):

You assign a pipe to a Watch Group by entering a string WatchNNN into the "Sink" column, where NNN is a number between 001 and 999. NNN cannot exceed the number of Watch Groups you have defined. You can enter single digit numbers using a preceding zero, but this is optional (Watch1, Watch01 and Watch001 are all valid strings).

Note: You assign multiple Watch Groups and/or a Watch Group and a Sink to a pipe by separating the names with semicolons.

The second method to assign pipes to Watch Groups is via the Fracture Set definition. Each pipe in a fracture network has a Fracture Set assigned to it.

The Fracture Set dialog provides an option to assign a Watch Group to the Fracture Set:

Pressing the Watch Groups... button in the Fracture Set dialog displays the following dialog allowing you to assign a Watch Group to the Fracture Set:

When this is done, GoldSim will add the discharges from all pipes that are members of this Fracture Set and that either discharge to pipes that are not members of the Fracture Set or discharge to unspecified downstream pipes (i.e., no downstream pipe is defined).

For each Watch Group, GoldSim adds an output to the Network pathway (a vector A one-dimensional array. of species The chemical (or non-chemical, such as bacterial or viral) constituents that are stored and transported through an environmental system in a contaminant transport model. In GoldSim, the Species element defines all of the contaminant species being simulated (and their properties). with dimensions An output attribute for an element that defines the dimensionality (in terms of Length, Time and other fundamental dimensions) of the output. of mass/time) that represents the discharge from the Watch Group.