Course Description
Mechanics of flow through subsurface media, including flow in confined, water table, and leaky aquifers, delayed yield, partially penetrating wells, boundaries, multiple wells, dual porosity media, and fractured rock; use of aquifer tests to estimate aquifer hydraulic properties.
Athena Title
AQUIFER MECHANICS
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in FORS 8730
Prerequisite
FORS 4110/6110-4110L/6110L or WASR(FORS) 4110/6110-4110L/6110L or GEOL 4220/6220 or GEOG 4030/6030 or CRSS 4600/6600-4600L/6600L or permission of school
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course focuses on understanding the mechanics of flow through subsurface media. Upon successful completion of the course, students will recognize and understand theories of aquifer flow related to confined and leaky aquifers, unconfined (water table) aquifers, wedge-shaped aquifers, effects of boundaries and multiple wells, effects of partially penetrating wells, dual porosity media, and fractured rock aquifers. Students will also be able to use aquifer pumping test data to identify the relative importance of flow and transport processes and to estimate hydraulic properties of aquifers.
Topical Outline
1 Basic concepts and definitions 2 Pumping tests 3 Confined aquifers 4 Leaky aquifers 5 Unconfined aquifers 6 Bounded aquifers 7 Wedge-shaped and sloping aquifers 8 Anisotrophic aquifers 9 Multi-layered aquifer systems 10 Partially penetrating wells 11 Large diameter wells 12 Variable-discharge tests 13 Recovery tests 14 Well-performance tests 15 Single-well tests 16 Slug tests 17 Uniformly-fractured aquifers 18 Single vertical fractures 19 Single vertical dikes