Analytical solution for groundwater flow in an anisotropic sloping aquifer with arbitrarily located multiwells

Abstract

This paper presents a new analytical solution to describe the hydraulic head distribution and flow system in an anisotropic unconfined aquifer with a sloping bed and arbitrarily located multiwells under transient recharge. Unlike the existing analytical solutions for delineating the capture zones, the solution presented in this study is easy and convenient to calculate flow field in some complicated systems, and it can provide useful information for the pump-and-treat design. In addition, the presented solution may have the possible application in evaluating the sensitivity of hydrogeological parameters, or estimating the hydraulic parameters when coupled with an optimization approach to analyze the aquifer data. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.