To promote the reform of graduate education, meet the current needs of teaching curriculum during the COVID-19 pandemic, strengthen the curriculum construction to improve the teaching level and quality of the graduate curriculum, and broaden graduate students’ international horizons, at the invitation of Professor Xu Tianfu and Professor Feng Bo from the College of New Energy and Environment at Jilin University, Prof. Javier Samper Calvete of the University of A Coruña gave 16 online lectures on Numerical Methods for Flow and Transport for graduate students enrolled in 2020.
Prof. Javier Samper obtains his bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain) and Ph.D. in Hydrology and Water Resources from the University of Arizona (USA). He is a world-renowned hydrogeologist who has made great achievements in the fields of environmental impact of municipal engineering, such as reactive solute transport, nuclear waste treatment and carbon dioxide geological storage, tunnel and underground excavation, and the fields of acid ore leaching and open pit water treatment.
In the process of large-scale development and utilization of groundwater resources, it is usually necessary to systematically evaluate and analyze the evolution of reservoir characteristics and potential risks (water resource depletion, seawater intrusion, land subsidence) and groundwater pollution caused by human activities under the condition of long-term exploitation by means of numerical simulation to achieve economic and sustainable exploitation. In the lecture, Prof. Javier Samper first led the students to have an overall understanding of the fundamental process of groundwater numerical simulation. Combined with years of experience and professional knowledge, he emphasized the importance of establishing a reasonable and correct hydrogeological conceptual model in the whole simulation work. Prof. Javier Samper’s lectures are approachable, coping well with the basic concepts of hydrogeology to lead the students to sort out and review the hydrogeological parameters which are commonly used in groundwater numerical simulation, their meanings and common numerical simulation methods (finite element method, finite difference method, etc.). He prefers to explain hydrogeological phenomena by using his field survey images combined with sketches to fulfill education commitment with enthusiasm and action.
The study of numerical simulation software is mainly based on the VISUAL-CORE, which is developed by Prof. Javier Samper’s team. In the process of software training, Prof. Javier Samper paid special attention to the positive interaction with students, and help them to solve software installation problems after class.
Finally, Prof. Javier Samper introduced his ongoing work on Analysis of Water Balance, Groundwater Flow and Uranium Transport and Transformation Processes in Alluvial Aquifers of Southern Spain. The research has been carried out since the 1980s and has experienced several adjustments to the reactive solute transport model. The simulation of underground multicomponent reactive solute transport has always been a difficulty in hydrogeology. For many parameters in the model that are difficult to obtain accurate and show obvious heterogeneity in space, the simulation results of reactive solute transport are often inaccurate. Through the introduction of Prof. Javier Samper, the students realized that as long as the model is reasonably described, the accuracy of simulation results can be significantly improved. Moreover, Prof. Javier Samper showed his exemplary scientific research attitude which is persistent, strict and rigorous in this work also benefited all students.
Through his online course, Prof. Javier Samper gave a lucid and detailed explanation to let the students have a deep understanding of hydrogeology, gradually master the basic theory and method of reactive solute transport, and have the ability to establish simulation model operation combined with their own research needs. Besides, the introduction to his research work and professional understanding has further deepened the students’ sense of mission and identity in scientific research and broadened their international horizons.
Prof. Javier Samper’s online lecture
The students take active participation in classroom discussions
