BOUNDARY KNOT METHOD SOLUTION OF GROUNDWATER FLOW IN UNCONFINED AQUIFER

Abstract

The groundwater flow problems are often solved using numerical models. The numerical models based of known fundamental solution, known as Trefftz methods, represents one of the efficient approaches used to solve potential flow phenomena described by the Laplace differential equation. The Trefftz-like methods, such as the boundary element method (BEM), represent a very efficient approach to solving groundwater flow problems. However, the implementation of BEM is cumbersome because of the fundamental solution singularity, and also there is a very limited number of software suites using BEM. The localized boundary knot method (LBKM) eliminates the drawback of boundary meshing and evaluation of singularity of fundamental solution as in BEM. The LBKM uses the known general solution to avoid the singularity evaluation, and the dual reciprocity approach to evaluate the true solution residual. This paper proposes a numerical model that implements the localized boundary knot method (LBKM) for 2D groundwater-free surface flow simulation.