Sensitivity of groundwater flow with respect to the drain–aquifer leakage coefficient

Abstract

Abstract Mitigation measures may be used to prevent soil and water pollution from waste disposal, landfill sites, septic or chemical storage tanks. Among them, drains and impervious barriers may be set up. The efficiency of this technique can be evaluated by means of groundwater modeling tools. The groundwater flow and the leakage drain–aquifer interactions are implemented in a conforming finite element method (FEM) and a mixed hybrid FEM (MHFEM) in a horizontal two-dimensional domain modeling regional aquifer below chemical storage tanks. Considering the influence of uncertainties in the drain–aquifer exchange rate parameter and using an automatic differentiation (AD) tool, the aim of this paper is to carry out a sensitivity analysis with respect to the leakage coefficient for the piezometric head, velocity field, and streamlines to provide a new insight into groundwater waterbody exchanges. Computations are performed with both an ideal homogeneous hydraulic conductivity and a realistic heterogeneous one. The tangent linear codes are validated using Taylor tests performed on the head and the velocity field. The streamlines computed using AD are well approximated in comparison with the nondifferentiated codes. Piezometric head computed by the MHFEM is the more sensitive, particularly near to the drain, than the FEM one.