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Numeri cal si mul at i on of ground wat er f l ow vi a a
new approach t o t he l ocal radi al poi nt i nt erpol at i on
meshl ess met hod
I. Saeedpanah
a
, E. Jabbar i
a
& M. A. Shayanf ar
b
a
School of Ci vi l Engi neer i ng, Ir an Uni ver si t y of Sci ence and Technol ogy, P. O. Box 16765163,
Nar mak, Tehr an, Ir an
b
Facul t y Member, Cent r e of Excel l ence f or Fundament al St udi es i n St r uct ur al Engi neer i ng,
School of Ci vi l Engi neer i ng, Ir an Uni ver si t y of Sci ence and Technol ogy, P. O. Box 16765163,
Nar mak, Tehr an, Ir an
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Numerical simulation of ground water ow via a new approach to the local radial point interpolation
meshless method
I. Saeedpanah
a
*, E. Jabbari
a
and M.A. Shayanfar
b
a
School of Civil Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 16765163, Narmak, Tehran, Iran;
b
Faculty
Member, Centre of Excellence for Fundamental Studies in Structural Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Iran University of
Science and Technology, P.O. Box 16765163, Narmak, Tehran, Iran
(Received 14 April 2010; nal version received 28 November 2010)
A novel approach to local radial point interpolation meshless (LRPIM) method is introduced to investigate the
inuence of leakage on tidal response in a coastal leaky conned aquifer system, based on a local weighted
residual method with the Heaviside step function as the weighting function over a local sub-domain. The present
approach is a truly meshless method based only on a number of randomly located nodes. In this approach,
neither global background integration mesh nor domain integration is needed. Radial basis functions (RBFs)
interpolation is employed in shape function and its derivatives construction for evaluating the local weak form
integrals. Due to satisfaction of kronecker delta property in RBF interpolation, no special treatment is needed
to impose the essential boundary conditions. In order to obtain the optimum parameters, shape parameters of
multiquadrics (MQ)-RBF are tuned and studied. The leakage has a signicant impact on the tidal behaviour of
the conned aquifer. The numerical results of this research indicate that both tidal amplitude of groundwater
head in the aquifer and the distance over which the aquifer can be disturbed by the tide are considerably
reduced by leakage. The novelty of the approach is the use of a local Heaviside weight function in the LRPIM
which does not need local domain integration and only integrations on the boundary of the local domains are
needed. Therefore, in this research a new local Heaviside weight function has been proposed. Numerical results
are presented and compared with the results of analytical solution. It is observed that the obtained results
agreed very well with the results of analytical solution. The numerical results show that the use of a local
Heaviside weight function in the LRPIM is highly accurate, fast and robust. It is also noticed that this novel
meshless approach using MQ radial basis is very stable.
Keywords: groundwater ow; local radial point interpolation meshless (LRPIM) method; test function; Heaviside
weight function; truly meshless method
Introduction
It is well known that the nite dierence method
(FDM), nite element method (FEM) and nite
volume method (FVM) are popular numerical
schemes for the solution of ground water ow
problems. These methods have provided many useful
and satisfactory results. However, their successes
largely rely on good quality meshes. The FEM has
been established as a powerful numerical technique
for the analysis of space domain problems having
arbitrary shapes. It has however, some drawbacks. It
has been observed that in the FEM, mesh generation
is a far more time-consuming and expensive task than
the assembly and solution of the nite element
equations (Li et al. 2010). Moreover, there are certain
classes of problems for which FEM is dicult, or
even impossible to apply, like problems with dis-
continuities, moving boundaries or severe deforma-
tions (Zienkievicz and Taylor 2000, Delia et al. 2002,
Matsumoto et al. 2002, Farhat 2005, Park et al. 2005,
Yamashita et al. 2008, Croft et al. 2009, Battaglia
et al. 2010, Liu et al. 2010). For such problems it has
become necessary to nd methods, which may be
somewhat more expensive from the viewpoint of
computation time but require less time in the
preparation of data. In recent years, a class of new
methods, known as meshless methods, has been
developed. The so-called mesh-free methods have
become a very attractive alternative for computer
modelling and simulation of problems in engineering
and sciences. There are a number of mesh-free
methods, such as the element free Galerkin (EFG)
method (Belytschko et al. 1994, Sakurai and Kawa-
hara 2004), the meshless local PetrovGalerkin
(MLPG) method (Atluri and Zhu 1998a,b, Atluri
and Shen 2002, Atluri et al. 2006, Hu et al. 2007,
Vavourakis and Polyzos 2008, Thakur et al. 2009),
the local radial point interpolation meshless (LRPIM)
*Corresponding author. Email: saeedpanah@iust.ac.ir
International Journal of Computational Fluid Dynamics
Vol. 25, No. 1, January 2011, 1730
ISSN 1061-8562 print/ISSN 1029-0257 online
2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/10618562.2010.545772
http://www.informaworld.com
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method (Liu and Gu 2001, Liu et al. 2002,
Tezer-Sezgin and Han Aydin 2002, Wang et al.
2002, Wang and Liu 2002, Wu and Liu 2003, Wang
et al. 2005, Liu et al. 2006, Viana et al. 2006,
Saeedpanah and Jabbari 2009a,b, Xia et al. 2009), the
nite point method (Onate et al. 1996), the discrete
least-squares meshless (DLSM) method (Afshar and
Shobeyri 2010), reproducing kernel particle method
(Liu et al. 1995), which is an improved version of
SPH, and so forth. These methods do not require a
mesh to discretise the problem domain. The approx-
imation functions are constructed entirely using a set
of scattered nodes, and no element or connectivity of
the nodes is needed. Up to date, the LRPIM method
has been successfully implemented for solid mechanics
problems. The LRPIM method does not need any
element or mesh for either eld interpolation or
background integration (Liu and Gu 2001, Liu et al.
2002, Liu 2003). The radial basis functions (RBFs)
can be used for trial and test functions. The exibility
in choosing the size and the shape of the local sub-
domain leads to a convenient formulation. Trial
functions are constructed using RBFs and discrete
equations are established through a local residual
formulation, which can be carried out node by node.
Therefore, element connectivity for trial function and
back ground mesh for integration is not necessary. As
LRPIM can be regarded as a local weighted residual
method, the weight function plays an important role
in the performance of this method.
This article will focus on groundwater dynamics in
response to tidal uctuation in a coastal aquifer
system. In most coastal areas, groundwater and
seawater are in constant communication because of
tidal uctuations. Since the 1950s, research on the
dynamic interaction between ground water and sea-
water has attracted much attention because of various
coastal hydrological, engineering and environmental
problems. The regional groundwater ow is inuenced
by the variation of seawater level resulting from tidal
uctuations. Coastal groundwater regimes have a
signicant impact on the environmental and ecological
conditions in coastal areas. The groundwater head
uctuation caused by the tide inuences the stability of
slopes and engineering structures along the coast. For
many environmental and engineering problems it is
important to understand the response of groundwater
to tidal uctuations in coastal waters. In recent years,
more analytical solutions have been derived to
investigate coastal hydrological problems related to
tidal dynamics. Sun (1997) developed an analytical
solution to understand the response of groundwater to
tidal uctuations in an estuary using tidal loading
boundary conditions. In a coastal aquifer system, there
is usually an unconned aquifer above one or more
conned aquifers. The pressure waves in unconned
aquifers tend to be damped because the storage
coecient is usually several orders of magnitude larger
than the conned storage coecient that governs
pressure changes at depth (Erskine 1991). While the
tidal uctuations in an unconned aquifer may be
negligible compared to that in a conne aquifer, the
unconned aquifer may inuence the tidal uctuation
in the underlying conned aquifer via leakage (Jiao
and Tang 1999).
Considerable eorts have been made to use the
LRPIM meshless method to solve problems in the
solid mechanics eld. In this article, the LRPIM
method based on a local weighted residual method
with the Heaviside step function as the weighting
function over a local sub-domain is proposed. The
method is a truly meshless approach based only on a
number of randomly located nodes. Therefore, in this
research the LRPIM method is developed for the
numerical solution of groundwater ow response to
tidal uctuations in a coastal leaky conned aquifer
based on a local weighted residual method with the
Heaviside step function as the weighting function over
a local sub-domain for the rst time. Therefore, in this
study an attempt was made to develop LRPIM
numerical solution to investigate the inuence of
leakage on tidal response in a coastal leaky conned
aquifer system. This numerical solution will then be
used to discuss the impact of leakage on the tidal
behaviour of the conned aquifer.
Governing equations
Figure 1 shows a subsurface system with a leaky
conned aquifer, an unconned aquifer and a semi
permeable layer between them. Assume that the
Figure 1. Schematic representation of a leaky conned
aquifer system near open tidal water.
18 I. Saeedpanah et al.
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shallow unconned aquifer has a large specic yield
which can damp eectively the tidal eect so that the
tidal uctuations in the unconned aquifer is negligible
compared to that in the conned aquifer. This
conceptual model is believed to be reasonable on the
basis of the numerous eld studies about the signicant
dierent tidal responses between conned and uncon-
ned aquifers (White and Roberts 1994).
The origin of the x axis is at the intersection of
the mean sea surface and the beach face. The x axis is
positive landward. The aquifer material is homoge-
neous and isotropic. The ow velocity in the conned
aquifer is essentially horizontal, and there is vertical
leakage through the semipermeable layer. The initial
groundwater head at time t 0 in the whole system
is uniform and equals h
z
, which is the distance from
the groundwater level to any convenient reference.
When t 4 0, h
z
in the unconned aquifer remains
constant. Assume that the storage of the semi
permeable layer is negligible and that the leakage is
linearly proportional to the dierence in head
between the two aquifers. These assumptions were
introduced by Hantush and Jacob (1955) in their
benchmark paper about similar leaky aquifer systems
in 1955. Under these assumptions the governing
equation for the one-dimensional groundwater ow
in the leaky conned aquifer can be written as (Jiao
and Tang 1999)
S
@h
@t
T
@
2
h
@x
2
L h
z
h 1
with a tidal boundary condition
h 0; t h
z
Acos ot c 2
where h(0,t) is the head at x 0, S is the storativity, T
is the transmissivity, L is the leakance or specic
leakage (Hantush and Jacob 1955, Hantush 1960),
which is the ratio of the hydraulic conductivity (k
0
) of
the semiconning unit over the thickness (b
0
) of the
semiconning unit, A is the amplitude of the tidal
change, c is the phase shift, and o is the tidal speed and
equals 2p/t
0
, where t
0
is the tidal period or time for the
tide to go from one extreme to the other (Fetter 1994);
the boundary condition for Equation (1) on the inland
side is
h 1; t h
z
3
which states that the tide has no eect far inland as x
approaches innity.
The analytical solution to Equation (1) subject to
boundary conditions (2) and (3) is given by Jiao and
Tang in 1999.
Local Heaviside weighted LRPIM meshless method
Point interpolation using radial basis functions
RBFs are useful for surface tting based on arbitrary
distributed nodes. Shape functions can be created
using RBFs and nodes in local support domains for
function interpolation at any point in the local support
domain. The local interpolation using RBFs enables
trial functions to pass through the actual values of the
unknown variables at scattered nodes (Wang and Liu
2002).
As shown in Figure 2, a continuous function h(x)
dened in a domain O, discretised by a set of nodes,
can be interpolated from the neighbouring nodes to a
point x
Q
using RBFs. According to Hardy in 1990 and
Liu and Gu in 2001, a RBF approximation to h is a
function of the form
h
h
x; x
Q

n
i1
R
i
x" a
i
x
Q
R
T
xax
Q
4
Where h
k
(x,x
Q
) is the approximation of h, h is the
piezometric head, R
i
(x) is the RBF in the space
coordinates x
T
[x], n is the number of nodes in the
neighbourhood (refers to the domain of interpolation)
of x
Q
, and " a
i
x
Q
are the coecients for R
i
(x),
respectively, corresponding to the given point x
Q
. It
should be noted that the number n of the neighbour-
ing nodes of x
Q
is less than or equal to the total
number of nodes in the global problem domain N
depending on the size of support domain specied. The
vectors are dened as:
" a
T
" a
1
; " a
2
; " a
3
; . . . ; " a
n
5
R
T
R
1
x; R
2
x; R
3
x; . . . ; R
n
x 6
The RBF is expressed as:
R
i
x R
i
r
i
7
where r
i
is the distance between point x and node x
i
.
For a one-dimensional problem r
i
is expressed as:
r
i
x x
i
j j 8
Enforcing the interpolation to pass through all n
scattered nodes within the point x
Q
support domain
leads to the following set of equations for the
coecients, " a
i
x
Q

h
k
hx
k

n
i1
" a
i
x
Q
R
i
x
k
; k 1; 2; . . . ; n 9
International Journal of Computational Fluid Dynamics 19
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which can be expressed in matrix form as follows:
R
Q
a H
s
10
where H
s
h
1
; h
2
; h
3
; . . . ; h
n
and R
Q
is the inter-
polation matrix of rank (n 6 n) as follows:
R
Q
R
T
Q

R
1
r
1
R
2
r
1
. . . R
n
r
1

R
1
r
2
R
2
r
2
. . . R
n
r
2

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
R
1
r
n
R
2
r
n
. . . R
n
r
n

11
The coecients can be obtained as:
a R
1
Q
H
5
12
where R
Q
71
is the inverse matrix of R
Q
.
Finally, the interpolation can be expressed as:
h
h
x R
T
x R
1
Q
H
5
FxH
5
13
where the matrix of shape functions F(x) is dened as:
Fx R
1
x; R
2
x; . . . ; R
k
x; . . . ; R
n
x R
1
Q
f
1
x; f
2
x; . . . ; f
k
x; . . . ; f
n
x 14
in which f
k
x is the shape function for the k-th node
given by
f
k
x

n
i1
R
i
xS
a
ik
15
where S
a
ik
is the (i,k) element of the matrix R
Q
71
. The
derivatives of f
k
x can be obtained as follows:
df
k
dx

n
i1
dR
i
dx
S
a
ik
16
There are several RBFs available. The most important
three RBFs consisting of Multiquadrics (MQ), Gaus-
sian (EXP) and thin plate splines (TPS) are as follows
(Franke 1982, Hardy 1990, Kansa 1990):
R
i
x r
2
i
a
c
d
c

2

q
a
c
! 0 MQ 17
R
i
x r
i

Z
log r
i
TPS 18
R
i
x e
c
2
r
2
i
EXP 19
where q, a
c
and Z are shape parameters that are used
for ne tuning. According to Kansa and Hardy in 1990
for its good performance in many cases, we choose
MQ as the RBF in this article. The partial derivatives
of the MQRBF can be obtained as follows:
dR
i
dx
2qr
2
i
a
c
d
c

2

q1
x x
i
20
where d
c
known as characteristic length, is the shortest
spacing between node I and its closest neighbour nodes
or the global boundary whichever is smaller. All the
shape functions satisfy the delta function property and
as is obvious both shape functions and their derivatives
are smooth functions and unlike FEM need not any
smoothing technique. Figure 3 shows shape functions
using MQ basis with an interpolation domain contain-
ing 46 nodes.
Local weak form method for LRPIM
The LRPIM uses local weak form (LWF) of equations
over a local sub-domain of arbitrarily shaped O
Q
called quadrature domain which is located entirely
inside the global domain O. This is the most
distinguishing feature of the LRPIM meshless method.
In comparison to global weak form (GWF) methods,
the LWF provides a clear concept for a local meshless
Figure 2. A groundwater ow domain and boundaries modelled using the Local Heaviside weighted LRPIM meshless method.
20 I. Saeedpanah et al.
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integration of the weak form which does not need any
background integration cells over the entire domain.
Also, it will lead to a natural way to construct the
global stiness matrix, not through the integration
over a contiguous mesh and by assembly of the
stiness matrices of the elements in the mesh, but
through the integration over local sub-domains.
The LWF is based on the quadrature domain O
Q
centred on each nodal point x
i
(Figure 2). If the nodal
points x
i
, and the support domain of the nodal shape
functions for the trial function are given, then the sub-
domain weak form can be constructed for each
quadrature domain O
Q
. There is no restriction on the
size of the quadrature domains or the support domains
of the nodal shape functions for the trial function.
Provided the union of all quadrature domains covers
the global domain, the equilibrium equation, and the
boundary conditions will be satised in the global
domain and on its boundary. However, the union of all
supports of the nodal trial shape functions must cover
the global domain, so that the connections between
dierent quadrature domains can always be secured.
In this section, the discretisation of Equation (1)
which is the governing equation of the ow in a
Figure 3. (a) Shape functions for leaky conned aquifer system domain near open tidal water (46 nodes); (b) Shape function of
node 1; (c) Shape function of node 3; (d) Shape function of node 12; (e) Shape function of node 24; (f) Shape function of node 45.
International Journal of Computational Fluid Dynamics 21
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domain O bounded by is presented for the meshless
LRPIM method. The periodic boundary condition is
considered as follows:
h 0; t h
z
Acos ot c on
Qh
21
where
Qk
is the essential boundary and h is the
hydraulic head.
As a meshless method, LRPIM satises the
equation in a LWF sense. A LWF of Equation (1)
over a local sub-domain O
Q
bounded by
Q
can be
obtained using the weighted residual method:

O
Q
w
@h
@t

T
S
@
2
h
@x
2

L
S
h
z
h

d 0 22
where h and w are the trial and test functions,
respectively. It should be noted that neither Lagrange
multipliers nor penalty parameters are introduced in
Equation (22), because as mentioned before the shape
functions satisfy the kronecker delta property and
hence the essential boundary condition can be imposed
directly, as done in the FEM. Using the divergence
theorem in Equation (22) and imposing the natural
boundary condition, the following local symmetric
weak form (LSWF) can be obtained:

O
Q
w
@h
@t
dO

O
Q
w
L
S
hdO

O
Q
T
S
@h
@x
@w
@x
dO

T
S
w
@h
@x

Qi

T
S
w
@h
@x

Qh

T
S
w
@h
@x

Qq

O
Q
w
L
S
h
z
dO: 23
To discretise the temporal term, Euler scheme is
adopted
@h
@t

h
n
h
n1
Dt
24
in which n is the n-th time step. Therefore Equation
(23) is rewritten as below:

O
Q
wh
n
dO Dt

O
Q
w
L
S
hdO Dt

O
Q
T
S
@w
@x
@h
@x
dO
Dt
T
S
w
@h
@x

Q
I
Dt
T
S
w
@h
@x

Qh

O
Q
wh
n1
dO Dt

O
Q
w
L
S
h
z
dO Dt
T
S
w
@h
@x

Qq
:
25
in which w is the test or weight function centred usually
at node I,
Qq
is a part of
Q
over which the natural
boundary condition (
q
) is specied,
Qh
is the
intersection of
Q
and the essential boundary
h
,
Qi
is the internal part of
Q
on which no boundary
condition is specied as shown in Figure 2 and q is the
prescribed ux of ground water ow boundary given by
q T
@h
@x
on
Qq
:
For a quadrature domain located entirely within the
global domain, there is no intersection between
Q
and
and the integrals over
Qh
and
Qq
vanish. The
support sub-domain O
Q
of a node x
i
is a domain in
which W
i
(x) 6 0. For an internal node, the integration
can be done numerically within the local domain. For a
node on or near the boundary, only a local mesh is
required. Therefore, no global background mesh is
required. As shown in Figure 2 O
w
is the local test or
weight function domain where w 6 0 (size r
w
).Dierent
local test functions can be used in the weak form (Eq.25)
which leads to dierent ways to construct the global
stiness matrix (Liu 2003). There are many options for
the test function (Atluri and Shen 2002). One of these is
based on the Heaviside step function given by
w
1 in O
Q
0 otherwise

Thus, the Heaviside step function is used as the test

function in this research for the rst time. Using the
Heaviside step function as test function, the LWF
(Equation (25)) can be rewritten as:

O
Q
h
n
dO Dt

O
Q
L
S
hdO Dt
T
S
@h
@x

Q
i
Dt
T
S
@h
@x

Qh

O
Q
h
n1
dO Dt

O
Q
L
S
h
z
dO Dt
q
S

Qq
: 26
The LSWF, Equation (26), gives one algebraic
equation relating all n scattered nodes within the
point x
Q
support domain. It can be seen that the
domain integral in the weak form (Equation (26)) is
avoided and only the regular boundary integral along
the boundaries of sub-domains is involved. Therefore,
we need as many local domains
Q
as the number of
nodes in the global domain O.
Discretisation and numerical implementation
The LWF is based on the quadrature domain O
Q
centred on each nodal point x
i
. If the nodal points x
i
,
and the support domain of the nodal shape functions
for the trial function are given, then the sub-domain
22 I. Saeedpanah et al.
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Figure 4. Fluctuation of groundwater head in the leaky conned aquifer at t 3 h with specic leakage L 0, 0.01 and
0.05 d
71
.
Figure 5. Fluctuation of groundwater head in the leaky conned aquifer at t 6 hours with specic leakage L 0, 0.01 and
0.05 d
71
.
Figure 6. Piezometer head uctuations at x 100 m from the coast with L 0, 0.01, 0.05, and 1 d
71
.
International Journal of Computational Fluid Dynamics 23
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6
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Figure 7. Piezometer head uctuations at x 150 m from the coast with L 0, 0.01, 0.05, and 1 d
71
.
Figure 8. Piezometer head uctuations at x 200 m from the coast with L 0, 0.01, 0.05, and 1 d
71
.
Figure 9. Piezometer head uctuations at x 400 m from the coast with L 0, 0.01, 0.05, and 1 d
71
.
24 I. Saeedpanah et al.
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Figure 10. Piezometer head uctuations at x 1000 m from the coast with L 0, 0.01, 0.05, and 1 d
71
.
Figure 11. Fluctuation of groundwater head in the leaky conned aquifer at t 3 h with specic leakage L 0.01 d
71
.
Figure 12. Fluctuation of groundwater head in the leaky conned aquifer at t 6 h with specic leakage L 0.01 d
71
.
International Journal of Computational Fluid Dynamics 25
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Figure 13. Fluctuation of groundwater head in the leaky conned aquifer at t 9 h with specic leakage L 0.01 d
71
.
Figure 14. Fluctuation of groundwater head in the leaky conned aquifer at t 12 h with specic leakage L 0.01 d
71
.
Figure 15. Piezometer head uctuations at x 100 m from the coast with L 0.05 d
71
.
26 I. Saeedpanah et al.
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weak form can be constructed for each quadrature
domain O
Q
. Assume that the groundwater ow
domain O is represented by properly scattered nodes.
The unknown variable h in this LSWF is approximated
by the nodal shape functions (14). To obtain the
discrete equations from the LSWF (Equation (26)), the
RBF interpolation (13) is adopted to approximate the
trial function h. Substitution of interpolation (13) into
the weak form (Equation (26)) yields the following
discrete equation for each node:

n
j1
K
ij
h
j
f
i
27
where, K
ij
and f
i
are stiness matrix and the load
vector respectively dened as:
K
ij

O
Q
f
j
dO Dt

O
Q
L
S
f
j
dO
Dt
T
S
@f
j
@x

Qi
Dt
T
S
@f
j
@x

Qh
28
f
i

O
Q
h
n1
dO Dt

O
Q
L
S
h
z
dO Dt
q
S

Qq
: 29
Gauss quadrature is employed in each local sub-
domain centred at node x
i
. For each Gauss quadrature
point x
Q
, RBF is performed to obtain the integrand.
Therefore, for a node x
i
, there are two local domains:
the local test function domain O
te
(same as the local
sub-domain O
Q
) for W
i
6 0 (size r
Q
) and the inter-
polation or support domain O
s
for x
Q
(size r
s
). Figure 2
shows the quadrature domain O
Q
of a node x
i
and the
support domain O
s
for a gauss point x
Q
. These two
domains are independent and dened as:
r
Q
a
Q
d
c
; r
s
a
s
d
c
30
where r
Q
is the radius of the quadrature domain (sub-
domain), a
Q
is the dimensionless size of quadrature
domain, r
s
is the radius of the support domain, a
s
is the
dimensionless size of support domain. As shown in
Figure 2, r
w
is the radius of the local test or weight
function domain O
te
. The local quadrature domain O
Q
is chosen to be the same as the test or weight function
domain O
te
(r
Q
r
w
) (Wang et al. 2002). As mentioned
before, because the shape functions constructed by
RBFs possess the delta function property, the essential
boundary conditions can be implemented easily and
the terms in the row of the matrix K for the nodes on
the essential boundary need not be computed which
reduces the computing cost. Parameters including
shape parameters of RBFs and parameters related to
LRPIM (support and sub-domain size) should be
tuned. Therefore, eects of quadrature domain and
inuence domain sizes are also studied.
Results and discussion
In this article, for the solution of Equation (1), we have
developed an ecient novel approach to the LRPIM
meshless method based on a local weighted residual
method with the Heaviside step function as the
weighting function over a local sub-domain for the
numerical solution of groundwater ow response to
tidal uctuation in coastal leaky conned aquifer.
A hypothetical example is used to demonstrate how
leakage inuences tidal uctuations (Jiao and Tang
1999). On the basis of this ecient novel meshless
approach, the actual groundwater head uctuation in
the leaky conned aquifer is calculated and presented in
Figures 4 17. Figures 4 and 5 show how the
uctuation of groundwater head in the aquifer changes
with space and how the wave propagates into the inland
direction at the time 3 and 6 h. It can be seen that
leakage signicantly reduces the tidal uctuation of
groundwater. As shown in Figure 4, if there is no
leakage (L 0d
71
) the tidal uctuation is evident at the
distance of over 3 km from the coastline. However,
when L is increased to 0.01 and 0.05/d
71
, uctuations
exist only within 2 and 1 km, respectively. Figure 6
shows how the amplitude at x 100 m changes with
leakage, when L 0, 0.01, 0.05 and 1/d
71
, the
amplitudes are 0.57, 0.51, 0.39 and 0.07 m, respectively.
Figure 7 shows how the amplitude at x 150 m
changes with leakage, when L 0, 0.01, 0.05 and
1/d
71
, the amplitudes are 0.53, 0.46, 0.31 and 0.02 m,
respectively. Figure 8 shows how the amplitude at
x 200 m changes with leakage, when L 0, 0.01,
0.05 and 1/d
71
, the amplitudes are 0.51, 0.41, 0.24 and
0.007 m, respectively. Figure 9 shows how the ampli-
tude at x 400 m changes with leakage, when L 0,
0.01 and 0.05, the amplitudes are 0.39, 0.26 and
0.087 m, respectively. When L 1/d
71
, the amplitude
is almost zero. Figure 10 shows how the amplitude at
x 1000 m changes with leakage, when L 0, 0.01
and 0.05, the amplitudes are 0.19, 0.06 and 0.004 m,
respectively. When L 1/d
71
, the amplitude is almost
zero.
Traditionally, the amplitude of groundwater uc-
tuations and the distance inuenced by the sea tide are
often used as an indicator of the degree of connection
between the conned aquifer and the open water. The
lack of tidal inuences is considered to be indicative of
a low-permeability aquifer with poor hydraulic con-
nection (White and Roberts 1994). On the basis of the
solution presented here this may be incorrect if the
International Journal of Computational Fluid Dynamics 27
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conned aquifer has a vertical hydraulic connection
with the overlying unconned aquifer.
We compared the results given by the present
meshless approach with the results of the analytical
solution of Jiao and Tang (1999). The same parameter
values as in Jiao and Tang (1999) were used in this
study as: T 2000 m
2
/d
71
; S 0.001; h
z
0 m;
C 0; A 0.65 m; o 2 p/24/d
71
.
In Figures 11 17, numerical results are presented
and compared with the results of analytical solution. It
is observed that the obtained results agreed very well
with the results of analytical solution.
Conclusions
We have developed a novel approach to LRPIM
method to investigate the inuence of leakage to tidal
response in a conned leaky aquifer based on a local
weighted residual method with the Heaviside step
function as the weighting function over a local sub-
domain for the rst time. Therefore, in this research a
new local Heaviside weight function has been proposed.
A local interpolation technique using RBFs is used to
construct the trial function entirely in terms of a set of
scattered nodes. The novelty of the approach is the use
of Heaviside weight function in the LRPIM which does
not need local domain integration and only integrations
on the boundary of the local domains are needed.
Compared to FEM in transient groundwater ow,
LRPIM does not need remeshing which leads to more
ecient computations. The eects of quadrature
domain and inuence domain sizes are also studied.
Thus, some parameters which aect the performance of
the present approach are also investigated. In order to
Figure 16. Piezometer head uctuations at x 200 m from the coast with L 0.05 d
71
.
Figure 17. Piezometer head uctuations at x 400 m from the coast with L 0.05 d
71
.
28 I. Saeedpanah et al.
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obtain the optimum parameters, shape parameters of
multiquadrics-RBF (MQ) are tuned and studied.
Therefore, parameters including shape parameters of
RBFs and parameters related to LRPIM (support and
sub-domain size) should be tuned. The shape para-
meters are tuned as q 0.99, a
c
2.31, a
Q
0.58 and
a
s
4.25.
The inuence of leakage on the tidal uctuation in
a leaky conned aquifer is studied on the basis of a
conceptual model which assumes that the overlying
unconned aquifer has a constant groundwater head
and that the leakage is proportional to the head
dierence between the two aquifers. This conceptual
model is supported by numerous eld studies by
previous researchers which indicate that the tidal
uctuation in an unconned aquifer may be negligible
compared to that in a conned aquifer.
The numerical results show clearly that this meshless
approach is easy to implement, and very exible for
analyses of groundwater ow response to the tidal
uctuations in a coastal leaky conned aquifer. On the
basis of this meshless approach, both tidal amplitude of
groundwater head in the aquifer and the distance over
which the aquifer is disturbed by the seawater can be
signicantly reduced because of leakage. Also, numer-
ical results show that the use of a local Heaviside weight
function in the LRPIM is highly accurate, fast and
robust. Thus, this meshless approach is an attractive
meshless method. It is also noticed that this novel
meshless approach using MQ radial basis is very stable.
It is certain that this approach will have considerable
impact on the simulation of groundwater ow.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to express their appreciations to the
reviewers for their valuable comments.
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