Groundwater Engineering Computation Methods Based on Forchheimer’s Equation

Abstract

Darcy was known as a very generous engineer. He is undoubtedly the father of the science of fluid flow in soils for his experiment on the flow of water through a sand column which was published in his book ‘Les fontainespubliques de la ville de Dijon in 1856, named after him as Darcy’s law. For the practical computation, this equation was developed by Dupuit & Thiem, and then it called Dupuit-Thiem equation. This equation was redeveloped by many researchers in many variations with different parameters especially for radial flow in pumping and recharging systems. Their basic pumping system equations for a confined and unconfined aquifer as well as for full penetration well with a fully perforated casing. In the practical implementation, this condition rarely occurs especially for thick aquifer; therefore many researchers developed a correction for those formulas from full penetration to be partial penetration wells. Partial penetration well is a well which its depth or tip of its casing does not reach an impermeable stratum beneath the aquifer. Despite the correction, those formulas still have difficulty in computing the design of pumping system due to its need for hydraulic gradient data which can only be defined by two real time data of piezometric head before and after pumping related to the horizontal distance of both points. So in this paper will be presented some inventions of computation methods for instance: recharge systems, the drawdown of pumping, pumping on the aquifer, water losses on the lake, permeability test, pumping test analysis and partial penetration well equation.