Advanced Analytical Model for Interpreting Oscillatory Pumping Tests With Wellbore Skin and Rate‐Dependent Skin Effects

Abstract

AbstractOscillatory pumping tests presents a potential advancement in aquifer testing as they minimize hydraulic perturbations and result in no net water abstraction or injection. However, aquifer property estimates can be less accurate if they are compromised by well head losses during the pumping test. Currently, oscillatory pumping test models ignore these losses. The objective of this study is to develop and evaluate an analytical solution that can interpret oscillatory pumping test data affected by rate‐dependent skin losses. Accordingly, the sensitivity of the drawdown response to small variations in aquifer and well parameters was analyzed. In addition, a previous field aquifer test was analyzed to evaluate the feasibility of the solution for aquifer parameter estimation. The results indicate that neglecting the rate‐dependent skin effect can lead to substantial errors in the determination of aquifer parameters such as transmissivity and storativity. Additionally, the proposed solution effectively reproduces the sharp groundwater level peaks observed in field data, whereas the solution that does not consider the rate‐dependent skin effect greatly underestimates the peak values.