Abstract
Land subsidence resulting from the withdrawal of groundwater is one of the problems of major importance to geosciences and geomechanics. In order to analyze the phenomena of land subsidence, this study attempts to constitute a more reliable prediction model to simulate the consolidation process of the aquifer system under the drawdown of groundwater. A fractional-derivative viscoelastic model is introduced to characterize the rheological properties of the aquitard, and the equation governing the consolidation process is established on the basis of the one-dimensional consolidation theory. The semianalytical solutions for the pore-water pressure, the settlement of aquitard, and the degree of consolidation are deduced using both finite sine transform and Laplace transform. Then, the comparisons of two special cases are performed to validate the correctness of the proposed model. The variations in the degree of consolidation and settlement of the aquitard are simulated to analyze the consolidation behavior of the aquifer system, and the influences of model parameters and the drawdown speed of groundwater are investigated.
Highlights
Land subsidence including both gentle downward warping and the sudden sinking of parts of the ground surface is one kind of widespread geological disaster that occurs in many countries and regions all over the world [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
In order to simulate the process of land subsidence, some aquifer system models and consolidation solutions have been developed after the seminal work on the consolidation problems conducted by Terzaghi [9] and Biot [10]
Land subsidence induced by the withdrawal of groundwater is a severe problem in many countries and regions all over the world
Summary
Land subsidence including both gentle downward warping and the sudden sinking of parts of the ground surface is one kind of widespread geological disaster that occurs in many countries and regions all over the world [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Wu and Miao [28] developed the viscoelastic theory of flow in an aquifer system using the standard Merchant model Using this model, Liu et al [5] simulated the consolidation process of the viscoelastic aquitard induced by the withdrawal of groundwater. Zhang et al [40] proposed a fractional-derivative Merchant model to study the time-dependent behavior of a supported plate on viscoelastic foundation Using this model, Zhu et al [41] predicted the deformation characteristics of Nansha clay subjected to one-dimensional compression. The idea of the fractional-derivative model is introduced to develop a general model to present the consolidation process of an aquifer system caused by the withdrawal of groundwater. The variations in the degree of consolidation and settlement of an aquitard are simulated to analyze the consolidation behavior of the aquifer system, and the influences of model parameters are investigated
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