Transp Porous Med

DOI 10.1007/s11242-009-9465-3

Nonlinear Multigrid Methods for Numerical Solution

of the Unsaturated Flow Equation in Two Space
Dimensions

Gheorghe Juncu · Aurelian Nicola · Constantin Popa

Received: 22 December 2008 / Accepted: 20 August 2009

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract Picard and Newton iterations are widely used to solve numerically the nonlinear
Richards’ equation (RE) governing water flow in unsaturated porous media. When solv-
ing RE in two space dimensions, direct methods applied to the linearized problem in the
Newton/Picard iterations are inefficient. The numerical solving of RE in 2D with a non-
linear multigrid (MG) method that avoids Picard/Newton iterations is the focus of this
work. The numerical approach is based on an implicit, second-order accurate time discret-
ization combined with a second-order accurate finite difference spatial discretization. The
test problems simulate infiltration of water in 2D unsaturated soils with hydraulic proper-
ties described by Broadbridge–White and van Genuchten–Mualem models. The numerical
results show that nonlinear MG deserves to be taken into consideration for numerical solving
of RE.

Keywords Unsaturated porous media · Richards’ equation · Finite difference ·

Nonlinear multigrid algorithm

G. Juncu (B)
Catedra Inginerie Chimica, Politehnica University Bucharest, Polizu 1,
011061 Bucharest, Romania
e-mail: juncugh@netscape.net; juncu@easynet.ro

A. Nicola · C. Popa
Department of Mathematics, Ovidius University, Bl. Mamaia 124,
900527 Constanta, Romania
A. Nicola
e-mail: anicola@univ-ovidius.ro
C. Popa
e-mail: cpopa@univ-ovidius.ro

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 G. Juncu et al.

1 Introduction

Estimation of water flow in unsaturated soils is a first interest problem in soil science,
agricultural and environmental engineering, theoretical and applied hydrology. In all studies
of the non-hysteretic, unsaturated flow, the fluid motion is assumed to obey the classical
Richards’ equation (RE) (Bear and Bachmat 1991; Smith et al. 2002; Roth 2008). RE is
obtained by inserting the Darcy law into the continuity equation. Considering the pressure
of the air constant, RE has two unknowns: the saturation and the pressure of the fluid phase.
Depending on the characteristics of the problem to be analyzed, three standard forms of RE
may be identified: pressure based, saturation based and mixed. The constitutive relation-
ship between saturation and pressure allows the conversion of one form of the equation to
another.
Analytical solutions of RE are presented by Philip (1967), Broadbridge and Rogers (1990),
Barry et al. (1993), Yuan and Lu (2005), Menziani et al. (2007) (and the references quoted
herein). However, RE being nonlinear the analytical solutions are limited to special cases.
Therefore, numerical approximations are widely used (e.g., Haverkamp et al. 1977; Celia
et al. 1990).
Finite differences (Haverkamp et al. 1977; Celia et al. 1990; Lee et al. 2004; McDonald
and Harbaugh 2008) Galerkin finite element (Pinder and Gray 1977; Lin et al. 1997) mixed
finite element (Baca et al. 1997; Berganaschi and Putti 1999; Woodward and Dawson 2000),
and finite volumes (Eymard et al. 1999, 2000; Manzini and Ferraris 2004; Loudyi et al. 2007)
are the standard approximations employed for the discretization of the spatial derivatives.
The spatial discretization is coupled with the method of lines for the time discretization. The
analysis of the time discretization errors can be viewed in Pop (2002).
This numerical technique requires the solution of a nonlinear system for every time step.
The standard approach is to use Picard, modified Picard, Newton or Newton-like meth-
ods (Paniconi et al. 1991; Paniconi and Putti 1994; Lehmann and Ackerer 1998). In one
space dimension, the size of the nonlinear algebraic system is small. Hence, direct linear
solvers (lower-upper (LU)—decomposition) can be used to solve the linear systems that
arise in a Picard/Newton iteration step. In 2D and 3D, the dimension of the linear systems
becomes prohibitively large for direct methods. In this case, iterative methods should be used
(Wagner et al. 1997; Wagner 1998; Tocci et al. 1998; Farthing et al. 2003; Bause and Knabner
2004).
An alternative approach is the Jager–Kačur (1995) iteration (Pop 2002; Wilderotter 2003).
However, the problems mentioned previously are not bypassed by the Jager–Kačur iteration.
In addition, this iteration requires the computation of two relaxation functions per time step.
Nonlinear multigrid (MG) proved to be one of the most powerful iterative methods to
solve numerically nonlinear partial differential equations (Navier-Stokes equations, espe-
cially). Nonetheless, this method has not been used until now in numerical solving of RE
(to our knowledge, McKeon and Chu (1987) and Kees et al. (2006) used nonlinear MG for
solving steady-state models). From the beginning, it must be mentioned that we refer only
to nonlinear iterative methods that belong to the class of successive substitution methods.
The aim of this work is to analyze the numerical performances of the nonlinear MG
algorithm in solving RE. The test problems describe infiltration of water into an unsatu-
rated porous medium. Boundary conditions of Dirichlet and/or Robin type were taken into
consideration.
This article is organized as follows. In Sect. 2, we describe the numerical method used.
Section 3 presents the test problems and the numerical experiments made. Finally, some
concluding remarks are briefly mentioned in Sect. 4.

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Nonlinear Multigrid Methods for Numerical Solution

2 Numerical Method

Let us consider the saturation-base form of the RE,

∂u dK ∂u
− ∇• (D(u)∇u) + = f (x, z, u) (1)
∂t du ∂z
where u (x, z) is the dimensionless fluid content, D(u) is the hydraulic diffusivity, K (u)
is the hydraulic conductivity, and (x, z) ∈ [0, L x ] × [0, L z ]. The vertical coordinate z is
considered positive downward. The initial and boundary conditions are:

u(x, z, 0) = u 0 (x, z), (x, z) ∈  (2)

and

u(x, z, t) = γ (x, z, u, t), (x, z) ∈ ∂, t > 0 (3)

and/or

(K (u)i z − D(u)∇u) • n = γ (x, z, u, t), (x, z) ∈ ∂ (4)

where i z is the versor of the z-axis and n the normal to the surface.
The spatial derivatives of Eq. 1 were discretized with the central second-order accurate
finite difference scheme on uniform grids with N x × Nz points. The time discretization is
the fully implicit second-order accurate scheme. The discrete approximation obtained is:



k+1 k+1 k+1 k+1 k+1 k+1
3u i,k+1
j − 4u k + u k−1
i, j i, j
D i, j+1/2 u i, j+1 − u i, j − Di, j−1/2 u i, j − u i, j−1
− 2
2t

h 
k+1 k+1 k+1 k+1 k+1 k+1
Di+1/2, j u i+1, j − u i, j − D i−1/2, j u i, j − u i−1, j
−
h2
k+1 k+1
dK k+1 u i, j+1 − u i, j−1
+ (u ) = f i,k+1 (5)
du i, j 2h j

where h is the mesh step size. The values of the diffusion coefficients were calculated as
harmonic averages or arithmetic averages of the grid point values.
The nonlinear iteration applied to Eq. 5 works as follows: if we know the values of u after
(l − 1) iterations, the values corresponding to the lth iteration are computed by applying one
iteration sweep to the equation



k+1,l−1 k+1,l k+1,l k+1,l−1 k+1,l k+1,l
3u i,k+1,l
j − 4u k + u k−1
i, j i, j
D i, j+1/2 u i, j+1 − u i, j − Di, j−1/2 u i, j − u i, j−1
− 2
2t

h 
k+1,l−1 k+1,l k+1,l k+1,l−1 k+1,l k+1,l
Di+1/2, j u i+1, j − u i, j − Di−1/2, j u i, j − u i−1, j
−
h2
k+1,l k+1,l
dK k+1,l−1 u i, j+1 − u i, j−1
+ (u i, j ) = f i,k+1,l−1
j (6)
du 2h
or in stencil form
⎡ ⎤
CN 4u i,k j − u i,k−1
⎣ CW CM CE ⎦ • u i,k+1,l = f i,k+1,l−1 +
j
j j
CS 2t

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 G. Juncu et al.

where,

3 Di,k+1,l−1
j+1/2 Di,k+1,l−1
j−1/2
k+1,l−1
Di+1/2, j
k+1,l−1
Di−1/2, j
CM = + + + + ,
2t h2 h2 h2 h2
Di,k+1,l−1
j+1/2 dK
k+1,l−1  1 Di,k+1,l−1
j−1/2 dK
k+1,l−1  1
CN = − + u i, j , CS = − − u i, j ,
h2 du 2h h2 du 2h
k+1,l−1 k+1,l−1
Di−1/2, j Di+1/2, j
CW = − , CE = − .
h2 h2

The linearization employed is only local, and it is in the sense of deferred updating of the
hydraulic diffusivity, hydraulic conductivity and the source term (a Picard-like method). As
a whole, the method is a nonlinear iteration belonging to the class of successive substitution
methods.
The single-grid nonlinear iteration used in this work is the Alternating Line Gauss–Seidel
(ALGS) method (Hackbusch 1985). In a quasi-FORTRAN, one ALGS step reads as:
compute D(u), K (u) and f ;
for i = 1, N x
for j = 1, Nz
A ( j) = CM
B ( j) = CN
C ( j) = CS
V( j) = f (i, j) − CE · u(i + 1, j) − CW · u(i − 1, j) + . . .
endfor
TRIDT (Nz , A, B, C, V)
for j = 1, Nz
u (i, j) = V( j)
endfor
endfor
for j = 1, Nz
for i = 1, N x
A(i) = CM
B(i) = CE
C(i) = CW
V(i) = f (i, j) − C N · u(i, j + 1) − C S · u(i, j − 1) + . . .
endfor
TRIDT (N x , A, B, C, V)
for i = 1, N x
u(i, j) = V(i)
endfor
endfor.
where TRIDT is a tridiagonal systems solver (THOMAS algorithm). Thus, in comparison
with Picard/Newton iteration, the present algorithm avoids the numerical solving of a linear
system with N x × Nz unknowns.
The MG method used to solve parabolic equation is the parabolic MG algorithm (Hack-
busch 1985). In the parabolic MG, the time axis in a space–time grid is an axis along which
solutions are updated simultaneously for a number of time steps. The number of time steps
defines the window of the algorithm. The window employed here comprised only one time
step. Thus, the present parabolic PDE was solved as a sequence of boundary value problems.

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Nonlinear Multigrid Methods for Numerical Solution

The one-time-step discrete equations were solved with the classical Full Approximation
Storage (FAS) algorithm (Brandt 1977) suitable for both linear and nonlinear problems. The
structures of the MG cycle are: (1) cycle of type V, (2) smoothing by ALGS, two smooth-
ing steps are performed before the coarse grid correction and one after, (3) prolongation by
bilinear interpolation for corrections, and (4) restriction of residuals by full weighting.
If we denote by the index m the current fine grid, the MG cycle (iteration) looks like:
– perform two ALGS smoothing steps,

h = RELAX (u h , L h , f h )
um 2 m m m
(7a)
– compute the residual,
rhm = f hm − L m m
h uh (7b)
– transfer the residual to the next coarse grid, m − 1, by full weighting,
m−1
r2h = Ih2h rhm (7c)
– transfer the solution to the next coarse grid, m − 1, by injection,
u m−1
2h = I n jh u h
2h m
(7d)
– correct the residual,
m−1 m−1
r2h = r2h + L m−1 m−1
2h u 2h (7e)
– solve the coarse grid equation; solve means perform two ALGS steps if m − 1 is the
coarsest level or repeat from (7a) if m − 1 is not the coarsest level,
u m−1 m−1 m−1 m−1
2h,new = solve(u 2h , L 2h , f 2h ) (7f)
– transfer coarse grid corrections by bilinear interpolation to the current fine level, m,
m−1 m−1
h = u h + I2h (u 2h,new − u 2h )
um m h
(7g)
– perform one ALGS smoothing step.

h = RELAX(u h , L h , f h )
um m m m
(7h)
The mesh step size on the coarser grid is equal to h c = 2−4 . The stopping criteria for a time
step are:
resi 2 erri 1
< 10−6 and < 10−6
res0 2 err0 1
 
 k+1,l−1 
where resi is the residual after i iterations, erri = u i,k+1,l
j − u i, j , 2 is the discrete
Euclidean norm and 1 is the discrete 1-norm. The maximum number of MG cycles allowed
in a time step is 100.

3 Numerical Results

The numerical performances of the nonlinear MG algorithm are monitored by the average
number of MG iterations per time step, ITER, and the average efficiency per time step, τ .
The efficiency was calculated as (Hackbusch 1985)
W
τ=
|ln ρ̄|

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Table 1 Comparison between

t u(z = 0)
the present numerical results and
the analytical solution of Present numeric Broadbridge et al. (1988)—
Broadbridge et al. (1988); analytic
u (z = 0) at different times for
c = 1.02 and dimensionless 2 0.8206 0.8163
water flux density at the upper
4 0.8805 0.8758
surface equal to 0.2
6 0.9036 0.8979
8 0.9152 0.9079
16 0.9299 0.9241

where W is the number of arithmetic operations per grid point and iteration step and ρ̄ is the
average reduction factor. The average reduction factor was calculated with the relation

 1
resi 2 i
 1
ρ̄ = ∼
= 10−6 ITER
res0 2

We stopped the numerical simulations when u i, j ≥ 0.990 because we focused only on

unsaturated regime in this work.

3.1 Test Problem I

The first test problem is the Broadbridge–White (Broadbridge and White 1988; White and
Broadbridge 1988) dimensionless model. The expressions for the hydraulic diffusivity and
conductivity in (1) are:

c(c − 1)
D(u) = , c ∈ (1, ∞)
(c − u)2
(c − 1)u 2
K (u) = , c ∈ (1, ∞)
c−u

The model has a single free parameter, c. The variables t, x, and z in (1) are dimensionless
quantities.
We made numerical experiments with: L x (L z ) = 1, 2, 4, 8, c ≥ 1.01, Dirichlet and/or
Robin boundary conditions. To verify the accuracy of the present computations, we com-
pared our numerical results with the analytical solutions presented by Broadbridge et al.
(1988), Broadbridge and Rogers (1990) and Stewart and Broadbridge (1999). The numerical
simulations made show that the agreement between the present numerical results and the
analytical solutions is very good. The relative differences are less than 1% (a sample from
these numerical experiments can be viewed in Table 1—from the numerical point of view,
u (z = 0) is one of the most sensitive variables). Also, the mass conservation relation (Celia
et al. 1990) is verified.
From the numerical simulations made, we selected for graphical presentation the following
cases (we considered f ≡ 0):

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Nonlinear Multigrid Methods for Numerical Solution

Fig. 1 Saturation profiles for water infiltration in a highly nonlinear Broadbridge–White (c = 1.01) soil.
a t = 1; b t = 14.51

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 G. Juncu et al.

– Figure 1; c = 1.01 (highly nonlinear soil), L x = 1, L z = 4, the initial and boundary

conditions,

t = 0, u = 0

∂u 0.05, x < 0.25 or x > 0.75
z = 0, K (u) − D(u) = 2K (u) + γ0 (x), γ0 (x) =
∂z 0.0, 0.25 ≤ x ≤ 0.75
z = Lz, u = 0
∂u
x = 0(L x ), = 0.
∂x
– Figure 2; c = 1.48 (moderately nonlinear soil), L x = 4, L z = 8, the initial and boundary
conditions,

t = 0, u = 0

∂u 0.0, x ≤ 1 or x ≥ 3
z = 0, K (u) − D(u) = 2K (u) + γ0 (x), γ0 (x) =
∂z 0.05, 1 < x < 3
z = Lz, u = 0
∂u
x = 0(L x ), = 0.
∂x
– Figure 3; c = 1.88 (weakly nonlinear soil), L x = 1, L z = 8, the initial and boundary
conditions,

t = 0, u = 0

∂u 0.0, x ≤ 0.25 or x ≥ 0.75
z = 0, K (u) − D(u) = 2K (u) + γ0 (x), γ0 (x) =
∂z 0.05, 0.25 < x < 0.75
z = Lz, u = 0
∂u
x = 0(L x ), = 0.
∂x

The results presented in Figs. 1–3 were obtained on meshes with step size h = 1/64. The
time step was considered constant and equal to t = 10−2 .
The numerical experiments made lead to the following observations:

– for all parameters values used, the nonlinear MG iteration converged; cases of non-
convergence or divergence were not encountered,
– the only parameter that has a relative influence on the convergence rate is c; the increase
in c decreases the convergence rate;L x , L z and the boundary conditions do not influence
significantly the convergence rate,
– the results obtained on meshes with step size h = 1/64 may be considered mesh-inde-
pendent.

Typical values of ITER and τ are presented in Table 2. Table 2 also shows the mesh behavior
of the algorithm. The present values of τ are higher than those reported in the literature
for standard linear problems, but this is natural because the subject of this work is a highly
nonlinear equation. If we drop from the calculus of W , the nonlinear arithmetical operations
(i.e., the calculus of the hydraulic diffusivity, hydraulic conductivity, and so on), τ takes
values in the range (8, 20). This is a good result.

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Nonlinear Multigrid Methods for Numerical Solution

Fig. 2 Saturation profiles for water infiltration in a moderately nonlinear Broadbridge–White (c = 1.48) soil.
a t = 6; b t = 13.51

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 G. Juncu et al.

Fig. 3 Saturation profiles for water infiltration in a weakly nonlinear Broadbridge–White (c = 1.88) soil.
a t = 1; b t = 14.51

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Nonlinear Multigrid Methods for Numerical Solution

Table 2 ITER/τ values for

Number of levels c
L x = 2, L z = 8, initial and
boundary conditions similar to 1.01 1.48 1.88
those employed in Figs. 1 and 2
and mesh step size on the coarser 3 3.02/45.2 3.27/48.9 4.62/69.1
grid h c = 2−4
4 3.61/54.2 3.92/58.8 5.15/77.2
5 3.78/56.8 4.65/69.9 5.61/84.2

Table 3 Parameters values for

No. n α(m−1 ) K s (m/h) θs θr Reference
the test problem 2
I 2.0 3.35 0.332083 0.368 0.102 Tocci et al. (1998)
II 1.6745 0.58 0.012825 0.473 0.058 Durner et al. (2008)

3.2 Test Problem 2

The water flow into an unsaturated soil with hydraulic properties given by van Genuchten–
Mualem model (Van Genuchten 1980) is the second test problem. The expressions for the
hydraulic diffusivity and conductivity in (1) are:

(1 − m)K s 1 − 1

1 −m


1 m
D(u) = u2 m 1−um + 1−um − 2 (m2 /h)
αm(θs − θr )
Ks √ 
 
1 m 2
K (u) = u 1− 1−um (m/h)
θs − θr

where K s (m/h) is the saturated conductivity, m = 1 − n −1 , α(1/m) and n are shape param-
eters, θs (m3 /m3 ) and θr (m3 /m3 ) are the saturated and residual water contents, respectively.
Note that u = (θ − θr )/(θs − θr ), θ (m3 /m3 ) being the water content.
We considered L x = L z = 1 (m) and f ≡ 0. From the numerical simulations made,
we selected for graphical presentation the soils depicted in Table 3. We made for the van
Genuchten–Mualem model, the same accuracy tests as for the Broadbridge–White model.
These tests confirmed the accuracy of the present computations.
Figure 4 shows water infiltration in the New Mexico soil (set I in Table 3). The initial and
boundary conditions are:

t = 0, u = 0.1

∂u 0.00, x ≤ 0.25 or x ≥ 0.75
z = 0, K (u) − D(u) = 2K (u) + γ0 (x), γ0 (x) = , (m/h)
∂z 0.003, 0.25 < x < 0.75
z = L z , u = 0.1
∂u
x = 0(L x ), = 0.
∂x
Figure 5 shows an 1D travelling wave (Caputo and Stepanyants 2008; Zlotnik et al. 2007) in
a silt (set II in Table 3). The initial and boundary conditions are:

t = 0, u = 0.1,
z = 0, u = 0.8, z = L z , u = 0.1,
∂u
x = 0(L x ), = 0.
∂x

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 G. Juncu et al.

Fig. 4 Saturation profiles for water infiltration in New Mexico soil; van Genuchten–Mualem model. a t =
4 (h); b t = 9.83 (h)

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Nonlinear Multigrid Methods for Numerical Solution

Fig. 5 Travelling wave in a silt; van Genuchten–Mualem model. a t = 1 (h); b t = 10 (h); c t = 30 (h)

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 G. Juncu et al.

Fig. 5 continued

The results presented in Figs. 4 and 5 were obtained on meshes with step size h = 1/128. The
time step was considered constant and equal to t = 10−2 (h).
For test problem 2, the convergence rate of the algorithm is similar to that of the test
problem 1. The ITER values are in the range [3.0, 4.50]. The values of the efficiency are in
the range (46.0, 70.0). The results obtained on meshes with step size h = 1/128 may be con-
sidered mesh-independent. However, it should be mentioned that for the calculus of ITER,
we did not take into consideration dry regions where the medium is (nearly) air saturated and
D, K as well as K
may be very small.
It should be also mentioned that for both test problems, the averaging relations (harmonic
or arithmetic) used to calculate the diffusion coefficients do not influence significantly the
convergence rate and the accuracy of the solutions.
We also made numerical simulations with a multi-layered soil. The multi-layered soil
consists of different combinations of soils. In these numerical experiments, we used the
pressure head base form of RE and a spatial discretization such that the material properties
change along boundaries between nodes. We used only the classical MG algorithm described
in Sect. 2 (for problems with discontinuous coefficients (interface problems), the MG algo-
rithm recommended is the so-called robust MG (Hackbusch 1985)). The convergence rate
(i.e., the values of ITER) for a multi-layered soil was practically the same as that obtained
for homogeneous soils—the data presented previously.

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Nonlinear Multigrid Methods for Numerical Solution

4 Conclusions

In this work, we have presented a nonlinear MG algorithm for solving RE in two space
dimensions in the unsaturated regime. Two soil models were employed: Broadbridge–White
and van Genuchten–Mualem.
The numerical results presented in the previous section show that, for the unsaturated
regime, the nonlinear MG algorithm should be an attractive alternative for solving numeri-
cally RE in two space dimensions. However, the present results were obtained for the water
content-based form of RE. This form is not recommended when part of the domain becomes
saturated. The extension of this work to the saturated–unsaturated regime will be a challenge
for the future.

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