<p>Groundwater flow and contaminant transport are significantly influenced by hydrofacies heterogeneity, which remains a central focus of research in hydrogeology. In this study, borehole lithological data and hydrogeological section data were used to develop three-dimensional models of aquifers and hydrofacies for typical Cenozoic unconsolidated aquifers in the Zhangji mining area, Huainan, China. Deterministic, stochastic, and deterministic-stochastic coupling models were developed to characterize hydrofacies heterogeneity. The effectiveness of these models was evaluated by comparing the modeling results with hydrogeological sections. While the highly generalized deterministic model struggles to capture the stochastic characteristics within layers, the stochastic model is more effective in predicting sedimentary patterns in complex regions. The deterministic-stochastic coupling model, which integrates both structural and stochastic characteristics of aquifers using transition probability geostatistics, demonstrated superior fitting performance when hydrofacies proportions within layers were similar. However, when the proportion of one hydrofacies within a layer becomes excessively dominant, the model tends to overemphasize the dominant hydrofacies while neglecting those with lower proportions. If a reasonable hydrofacies delineation mechanism can be established and the three methods can be integrated in a complementary manner, the accuracy of characterizing aquifer heterogeneity will be further improved.</p>