Rigorous Theoretical Analysis of a Flow Pump Permeability Test

Abstract

With the growing importance of environmental issues in our society, extremely low-permeability geotechnical materials are being studied increasingly for their long-term stability and effectiveness in retarding the transport of hazardous wastes. Relatively rapid measurements of the permeability and specific storage of the materials, using relatively low hydraulic gradients, can be obtained with a constant flow pump and the corresponding theoretical analysis proposed by Morin and Olsen (1987). However, the accuracy of this method is limited because their theoretical analysis does not take into account the storage capacity of the experimental system. This paper presents a more general theoretical analysis and shows how it can be used to determine not only the permeability and specific storage of a test specimen, but also the storage capacity of the experimental system. Experimental data are presented that illustrate the accuracy and efficiency of the general theoretical analysis.

Estimation of coastal aquifer properties: A review of the tidal method based on theoretical solutions

“…(3) The input imposed on the system boundaries corresponds to the tide waves in the ocean and can be simulated with a cosinusoidal function, such as h(0, t) = h m + Acos(ωt + c) in which h m is the mean sea level [L]; (4) the measured system output corresponds to the data measured in an observation well and theoretical values which can be calculated with the theoretical solution by substituting specific values for individual variables, such as those listed in Table 1; (5) An error function can be defined, in general, with a least-squares reduction of the discrepancy between a series of measured data and those obtained theoretically; and (6) A proper method, such as a direct search method, can be used (Esaki, Zhang, Takeshita, & Mitani, 1996;Kolda, Lewis, & Torczon, 2003). The parameter identification technology was successfully used for characterizing coastal aquifer systems (e.g., Jha et al, 2008;Koizumi, 1998;Trefry & Bekele, 2004;Zhao et al, 2019).…”