COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT CONFIGURATIONS OF RANNEY WELLS USING FINITE ELEMENT MODELING
 
M. Dimkić, M. Krstić, N. Filipović, B. Stojanović, V. Ranković, ... (UDC: 556.324:519.673)
 
 Abstract
The objectives of this study are to define the regional and local groundwater flow, and to give
quantitative estimates of different dynamic parameters for Ranney wells in Belgrade Water
Supply Center. To solve these tasks used the numerical tools to quantitatively model flow
through porous saturated and unsaturated media. We used finite element (FE) modeling of
underground water flow and developed specific algorithms for the Ranney wells representation.
The unsaturated soil hydraulic properties are described for each finite element by applying our
3D interpolation algorithm. Our software for pre- and post-processing Lizza is used, developed
for easy modeling of complex engineering underground water flow problems with Ranney
wells. The software FE package PAK-P is employed as the solver. This software can handle
flow regions delineated by irregular boundaries. The flow region may be composed of
nonuniform soils having an arbitrary degree of local anisotropy. Flow can occur in the vertical
plane, the horizontal plane, or in a three dimensional region exhibiting radial symmetry about
the vertical axis. Constant or time-varying prescribed head and flux boundaries can be handled,
as well as boundaries controlled by atmospheric conditions. Soil surface boundary conditions
may change during the simulation from prescribed flux to prescribed head type conditions (and
vice versa). A seepage face boundary through which water leaves the saturated part of the flow
domain can be modeled, and also free drainage boundary conditions. The results of simulation
for some real engineering problems (Ranney well RB-8 in Belgrade Water Supply Center) are
presented.