Radial flow to a partially penetrating well with storage in an anisotropic confined aquifer

SummaryDrawdowns generated by extracting water from large diameter (e.g. water supply) well are affected by wellbore storage. We present an analytical solution in Laplace transformed space for drawdown in a uniform anisotropic aquifer caused by withdrawing water at a constant rate from partially penetrating well with storage. The solution is back transformed into the time domain numerically. When the pumping well is fully penetrating our solution reduces to that of Papadopulos and Cooper, 1967 and Hantush, 1964 when the pumping well has no wellbore storage; Theis (1935) when both conditions are fulfilled and Yang (2006) when the pumping well is partially penetrating, has finite radius but lacks storage. Newly developed solution is then used to explore graphically the effects of partial penetration, wellbore storage and anisotropy on time evolutions of drawdown in the pumping well and in observation wells. We concluded after validating the developed analytical solution using synthetic pumping test.

► Analytical solution for pumping test in confined aquifer is developed.
► It includes partial penetration, wellbore storage and anisotropy of confined aquifer.
► Developed solution generalizes and unifies existing solutions for confined aquifer.