Course goals
Please note: the information in the course manual is binding.
This course introduces the basic principles and methods necessary to quantify flow of water and transport of solutes through saturated porous media.
In addition, students will be introduced to basic numerical methods and (professional) software for modelling groundwater flow.
Content
The importance of groundwater as a resource and as a critical component in many environmental issues is widely recognized. Groundwater hydrology is a rapidly evolving science and plays a key role in understanding a variety of subsurface processes.
Porous media properties such as porosity and intrinsic permeability, hydraulic conductivity, erosion, fractures, continuum approach, Representative Elementary Volume REV- concept, up-scaling from pore-to continuum scale, basic fluid mechanical concepts.
Groundwater flow: Darcy's Law, hydraulic head, hydraulic conductivity, pore pressure, anisotropy, Dupuit assumptions, mapping of flow, flow in fractured media.
Flow equations in confined and unconfined aquifers: combining the mass balance equation and Darcy’s Law, boundary conditions, storage properties of porous media: compressibility of groundwater and compressibility of the solid phase, Boussinesq approximation, initial and boundary conditions, flow nets, dimensional analysis, analytical solutions of simple hydro-geological problems.
Density-dependent flow, coastal aquifers.
Super position principle, method of images, Analytical Element Method.
Transient flow of groundwater, pumping tests, slug tests, constant head and falling head tests.
Groundwater flow modeling, modeling approaches (schematization), simulation, evaluation model results, model verification and validation, finite differences, grids, integration in time, initial and boundary conditions, computer models, introduction to ModFlow, modeling exercises with ModFlow.
Particle tracking in groundwater modeling.
Two excursions are an integral part of this course. In general a visit to a bank-infiltration water supply pumping station (De Steeg of Oasen) and a trip to a groundwater related site/event
