Calculation of seepage surface and water flow on pumping wells for unconfined aquifers employing the network method

Abstract

Water scarcity has led to its extraction from underground reserves or aquifers, for which pumping wells are built. For this reason, the phenomenon has been mathematically (and then, computationally) modelled for either confined or unconfined aquifers. As former theoretical approaches to the problem, solution for groundwater flow in unconfined aquifers did not consider vertical flow and variables such as seepage surface were not studied. The aim of this work is to provide a methodology to estimate both parameters using a computational model based on the network method. This methodology consists on the analogy between electrical quantities (voltage and intensity) and geotechnical variables (water potential and flow). The results obtained with this tool are compared to those from scale models.