Two-region non-Darcian flow toward a well in a confined aquifer

We have derived an analytical solution for two-region flow toward a well in a confined aquifer based on a linearization method. The two-region flow includes Izbash non-Darcian flow near the well and Darcian flow in the rest of the aquifer. The wellbore storage is also considered. The type curves in the non-Darcian and Darcian flow domains are obtained by a numerical Laplace inversion method incorporated in MATLAB programs. We have compared our results with the one-region Darcian flow model (Theis). Our solutions agree with those of Sen [Sen Z. Type curves for two-region well flow. J Hydr Eng 1988; 114(12):1461-84] which were obtained using the Boltzmann transform at late times for fully turbulent flow, while some difference has been found at early and moderate times. We have defined a dimensionless non-Darcian hydraulic conductivity term which is shown to be a key parameter for analyzing the two-region flow. A smaller dimensionless non-Darcian hydraulic conductivity results in a larger drawdown in the non-Darcian flow region at late times. However, the dimensionless non-Darcian hydraulic conductivity does not affect the slope of the dimensionless drawdown versus the logarithmic dimensionless time in the non-Darcian flow region at late times. The dimensionless non-Darcian hydraulic conductivity does not affect the late time drawdown in the Darcian flow region. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.