Leak identification in a saturated unsteady flow via a Cauchy problem

In this initial study, we propose a numerical method for identifying multiple leak zones in a saturated unsteady flow. Using the conventional saturated groundwater flow equation, the leak identification problem is modeled as a Cauchy problem for the heat equation and the aim is to find the regions on the boundary of the solution domain where the solution vanishes because the leak zones correspond to null pressure values. This problem is ill-posed and to reconstruct the solution in a stable way, we modify it and employ a previously proposed iterative regularizing method. In this method, mixed well-posed problems obtained by changing the boundary conditions are solved for the heat operator as well as for its adjoint to obtain a sequence of approximations to the original Cauchy problem. The mixed problems are solved using a finite element method and the numerical results indicate that the leak zones can be identified with the proposed method.