A numerical solution of Richards equation: a simple method adaptable in parallel computing

Numerical simulation models of water flow in variably saturated soils are important tools in water resource management, assessment of water-related disasters and agriculture. Richards equation is one of the most used models for the fluid flow simulation into porous media. It is a partial differential equation whereby analytical solutions are only possible after applying a number of restrictive assumptions. Therefore, the derivation of efficient numerical schemes for its approximated solution has to be computed by discretization methods. We propose a numerical procedure considering a simplified linearization scheme that makes it adaptable to parallel computing. A comparison in computational performances with three other numerical procedures is detailed for a large computation, including the assessment of the landslide hazard in real areas. We demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed numerical procedure by comparing the results we obtained with a parallel code.