Simulation of groundwater flow in unconfined aquifer using meshfree point collocation method

For appropriate management of available groundwater, the flow behavior in the porous media has to be analyzed. The complex problem of groundwater flow can be studied by solving the governing equations analytically or by using numerical methods. As the analytical solutions are available only for simple idealized cases, numerical methods such as finite difference method (FDM) and finite element method (FEM) are generally used for field problems. Meshfree (MFree) method is an alternative numerical approach to solve complex groundwater problems in simple manner. MFree method eliminates the drawback of meshing and remeshing as in FDM and FEM which can translate to substantial cost and time savings in modeling. In this paper, a model using MFree point collocation method (PCM) with multi-quadric radial basis function (MQ-RBF) is proposed for 2D groundwater flow simulation. The accuracy of the developed model is verified with available analytical solution in literature. The developed model is applied initially for a hypothetical problem and further for a field problem to compute head distribution. The PCM model results for the hypothetical problem are compared with FEM simulations while that of field problem are compared with boundary element based model results. The PCM model results are found to be satisfactory showing the applicability of the present approach.