The groundwater flow in aquifers contain evaporite rocks can cause problems such as geo-mechanical subsidence or collapse. In this work, we focus on the development of numerical models to simulate the flow in porous and non-porous domains in order to study the dissolution phenomenon and fractures evolution over time. The first part of this thesis is devoted to developing new solutions for the validation of numerical models to simulate density driven flow in porous media. The new procedure consist of solving simultaneously the flow and the transport equations using the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. The use of this technique allowed us to develop, for the first time, semi-analytical solutions of saltwater intrusion in the case of small diffusion and in the case of a large density contrast. In the second part of this work, we studied the flow in evaporitic rocks. A numerical code was developed to solve the nonlinear system using advanced numerical methods. To validate this new model, we have developed a semi-analytical solution for the density Stokes flow. The third part of this work is devoted to transport with dissolution of rock salt. As a first step, we studied the influence of various parameters on the dissolution of salt in Adlertunnel located at a depth of 160 m in the region of Basel in Switzerland. In a second step, we are interested in the simulation of the fracture’s evolution as a result of the dissolution. The numerical model takes into account the Stokes flow and mass transport effects and dissolution of the fracture walls.
