Aquifer Response to Sinusoidal or Arbitrary Stage of Semipervious Stream

Abstract

Analytical expressions for the aquifer responses, viz., groundwater head, rate of flow and cumulative volume of flow, to a generalized sinusoidal stage of semipervious streams considering the stream boundary resistance, are derived. The analytical aquifer responses to a linear stream stage and to a typical analytical flood wave that was used by Cooper and Rorabaugh, are also derived. For a zero-stream resistance, the aquifer responses converge to those for a fully penetrating stream. Also, two analytical methods, a “ramp kernel method” and a “Fourier series method,” for obtaining the aquifer responses to an arbitrary temporal stage of sempervious stream, are developed. The analytical expressions of the ramp kernels for different aquifer responses are developed. The ramp kernel method is found superior to the conventional convolution that uses numerical integration or pulse kernels for obtaining the convolution integral. In the Fourier series method, the aquifer responses to sinusoidal stage are used along with Fourier series. The results obtained using both methods are in close agreement. The new methods are also applicable to fully penetrating streams by assigning a zero value to the stream resistance.