Author(s)

G.A. Akpoji & F. De Smedt

Abstract

Assessment of the effective hydraulic conductivity with a numerical model G.A. Akpoji, F. De Smedt Pleinlaan 2, B-1050, Brussels, Belgium ABSTRACT This paper investigates the concept of the effective conductivity for the characterization of three-dimensional groundwater flow in anisotropic heterogeneous formations. Spatially correlated isotropic random conductivity fields are obtained using the turning bands method. Anisotropy is then induced by scaling of the z-dimension. The solution of the flow problem is obtained with a finite element model that uses a preconditioned conjugate gradient algorithm targeted for supercomputer implementation. The resulting vertical and horizontal effective conductivities are compared with previously derived expressions. Also, a new and simple expression for the effective conductivity is developed, which recovers familiar results. Numerical estimates of the horizontal effective conductivity agree with the results of the analytical methods only for sma

Keywords