A field test and analysis method has been developed to estimate the vertical distribution of hydraulic conductivity in shallow unconsolidated aquifers. The field method uses fluid injection ports and pressure transducers in a hollow auger that measure the hydraulic head outside the auger at several distances from the injection point. A constant injection rate is maintained for a duration time sufficient for the system to become steady state. Exploiting the analogy between electrical resistivity in geophysics and hydraulic flow two methods are used to estimate conductivity with depth: a half-space model based on spherical flow from a point injection at each measurement site, and a one-dimensional inversion of an entire dataset.
The injection methodology, conducted in three separate drilling operations, was investigated for repeatability, reproducibility, linearity, and for different injection sources. Repeatability tests, conducted at 10 levels, demonstrated standard deviations of generally less than 10%. Reproducibility tests conducted in three, closely spaced drilling operations generally showed a standard deviation of less than 20%, which is probably due to lateral variations in hydraulic conductivity. Linearity tests, made to determine dependency on flow rates, showed no indication of a flow rate bias. In order to obtain estimates of the hydraulic conductivity by an independent means, a series of measurements were made by injecting water through screens installed at two separate depths in a monitoring pipe near the measurement site. These estimates differed from the corresponding estimates obtained by injection in the hollow auger by a factor of less than 3.5, which can be attributed to variations in geology and the inaccurate estimates of the distance between the measurement and the injection sites at depth. 相似文献
Earthquake-induced slope stability is evaluated by the force-equilibrium method in engineering practice. This method provides a safety factor against initiating failure or displacement according to the Newmark model along a fixed slip surface but it cannot evaluate failure deformations after failure occurs. An energy approach is proposed as an alternative means for evaluating slope failures and subsequent flow deformations. The driving energy for slope displacement is considered to be the earthquake energy and the gravitational potential energy. As a first step in the research, an energy balance is formulated for the model of a rigid block resting on an inclined plane. Then, an innovative model test is developed, in which the energy balance in a sliding slope is measured on a shake table. The earthquake energy used for the slope failure can be successfully quantified in the test and its contribution to displacement is discussed in the light of the energy balance established for the block model. 相似文献
An iterative inverse method, the sequential self-calibration method, is developed for mapping spatial distribution of a hydraulic
conductivity field by conditioning on nonreactive tracer breakthrough curves. A streamline-based, semi-analytical simulator
is adopted to simulate solute transport in a heterogeneous aquifer. The simulation is used as the forward modeling step. In
this study, the hydraulic conductivity is assumed to be a deterministic or random variable. Within the framework of the streamline-based
simulator, the efficient semi-analytical method is used to calculate sensitivity coefficients of the solute concentration
with respect to the hydraulic conductivity variation. The calculated sensitivities account for spatial correlations between
the solute concentration and parameters. The performance of the inverse method is assessed by two synthetic tracer tests conducted
in an aquifer with a distinct spatial pattern of heterogeneity. The study results indicate that the developed iterative inverse
method is able to identify and reproduce the large-scale heterogeneity pattern of the aquifer given appropriate observation
wells in these synthetic cases. 相似文献