Groundwater Flow Modeling in a Heterogeneous Porous Medium Using Meshless Method

Abstract

Groundwater flow modeling plays an important role in managing the groundwater resources. Several numerical models have been used to model the groundwater flow in hypothetical and field aquifers. These models can predict future groundwater level in an aquifer system using the available groundwater information and incoming/outgoing water into it for the selected time period. In most of the past studies, finite difference (FDM) and finite element methods (FEM) have been used to solve the variety of groundwater problems. In the last two decades, meshless methods have been successfully used to model the groundwater flow in porous media. These methods represent the problem domain with scattered and unconnected nodes in contrast to the mesh/grids in FDM/FEM. In the present study, meshless element-free Galerkin method (EFGM) is used to model the groundwater flow in a hypothetical heterogeneous porous medium. The considered flow domain is assumed to consist of zones of different hydraulic conductivities and also has a few pumping and recharge wells. In this study, both finer and coarser nodes are also used to represent the computational domain and compare their EFGM solution. The results of the EFGM flow model are checked against those with MODFLOW model, and it showed a good agreement, showing the applicability of EFGM.