Qualifying a computer program for simulating fracture flow

This paper is concerned with the numerical simulator \(\text{ d }^{3}\text{ f }\) which is designed for modelling density-driven flow in highly complex groundwater flow systems. The program looks back on a comparatively long history of advancements in terms of performance as well as the range of possible applications. It has recently been expanded to include fracture flow. A new sophisticated approach for flow in a fracture had been developed and implemented for this purpose which left the task to demonstrate the viability of this new feature for real fracture systems. How this task has been dealt with is described here. Beforehand, some thoughts are given to the use of the termini “verification”, “validation” and “qualification”.