Properties of Aquifers

Aquifer
 An aquifer is a wet underground layer of water-bearing permeable
rock or unconsolidated materials from which groundwater can be
usefully extracted using a water well.
 Useful Definitions
 Confining Layer – geologic unit with little or no intrinsic permeability
 Aquifuge – Absolutely impermeable unit that will not transfer water
 Aquitard – a layer of low permeability that can store ground water and
transmit it slowly from one aquifer to another

 Unconfined/Confined Aquifer – an aquifer without/with a confining layer on

top.

 Leaky Confined Aquifer – a confined aquifer with an aquitard as one of its

boundaries

 Perched Aquifer – a layer of saturated water that forms due to

accumulation above an impermeable lens (e.g. clay)

 Water Table – depth where the soil becomes completely saturated

 Topics
 Aquifers are essentially porous media and so the
properties relate to the properties of porous media:

 Porosity
 Grain Size Distribution
 Specific Yield
 Hydraulic Conductivity and Permeability
 Compressibility
 Porosity
 Porosity is the ratio of the volume of voids to the total
volume
VV
n=
VT

 0<n<1, although sometimes we express it as a

percentage by multiplying by 100

 Question: How would you measure this?

 What does porosity depend
on
 Packing
 Cubic Packing – Calculate the porosity….
 What does porosity depend
on
 Packing – what is we switch it up

VS.

Cubic vs Hexagonal vs Rhombohedral

(47.65%) (39.5%) (25.95%)

 Hexagonal Packing
 Shift All Spheres on top layer one radius to the right
 Rhombohedral-Packed Spheres
Shift All Spheres on top layer one radius to the right and
the shift forward one radius also

 Estimation of porosity accounting to this model:

VV VT -Vs Vs 4p r 3
j= = =1- =1- = 0, 26 or 26,0%
VT VT VT V - total12 2r 3
volume = 2r × 2r × h = 4 2r
T
3

4
Vs-solid volume = p r 3
3
h-height in the tetrahedron = 4r 2 - 2r 2 = 2r
 Key Central Point

Porosity does not depend on the

diameter of your grains!!!
Heterogeneous Particle Sizes
 Size and Shape of Grains makes a difference
 Example
Porous medium blended with three types of sediment fractions:
 Fine pebble gravel
with porosity (pebble=0,30)
 Sand (sand=0,38)
 Fine sand (f.sand=0,33)

Vp
  f .sand  sand  pebble  0,037 or 3,7%
Vb
 Classification of Sediments
 Engineering ASTM D2488 (Amer. Soc Testing
Materials)
Typical Porosity Ranges
Grain Size Distribution
 Very few materials have uniform
grain sizes.
 In order to measure the distribution
of grains successively sieve
materials through sieves of different
size and build grain size distribution
 Metrics – d10 and d60 (ten and sixty
percentile diameters)
 CU=d60/d10 – coeff of uniformity
 CU<4 well sorted
 CU>6 poorly sorted
 d10 is called effective grain size
 Typical GSD

GSD of silty fine to medium sand – What is CU

 Typical GSD

GSD of fine sand – What is CU

 Specific Yield
 Specific yield (Sy) is the ratio of the volume of water that
drains from a saturated rock owing to the attraction of
gravity to the total volume of the saturated aquifer.

 Specific retention (Sr) is the rest of the water that is retained

n = Sy + S r
 Question: You have two materials with cubic packing; one is
made up of small spheres, the other of larger ones; which
has the larger specific retention? Think about the physics of
what is retaining the water?
Typical Specific Yields
 Hydraulic Conductivity
 Henry Darcy – the father of groundwater hydrology
Hydraulic Conductivity
 Measure flowrate Q
to estimate specific
discharge (velocity)

q=Q/Area

 Observations
1
Qµ
L
 Darcy’s Law

q = -K dh
dx

Why does this minus sign

exist?
Hydraulic Conductivity
Head drops with distance, which
means that dh/dx is negative, but
q should be positive
Hydraulic Conductivity depends on both the
fluid and the porous medium
 Further Observations
 In a bed of packed beads the flow rate is proportional to
the diameter squared

Qµd 2

 The flow rate is proportional to the specific weight of

the fluid
Q µ rg
 The flow rate is inversely proportional to the viscosity of
the fluid
1
Qµ
m
 Therefore
2 g dh
q = -Cd m dl

Property of the porous medium

only called intrinsic permeability What drives the flow

Denoted ki with units m2 (or Darcy’s)

1 Darcy=1x10-8cm2
Property of the fluid only

ki = Cd 2
C here is a constant with no dimensions
 Typical Hydraulic
Conductivities (for water)
 Hazen Formula for Hydraulic
Conductivity
 Recall from our classification C shape factor
of soils
Very fine sand: C=40-80
 Effective diameter d10
Fine sand: C=40-80
 Hazen proposed that
hydraulic conductivity is Medium sand: C=80-120
given by
Coarse sand: C=80-120
(poorly sorted)
K=C (d10)2 Coarse sand: C=120-50
(well sorted, clean)

This is for water!!!!

C – shape factor (see adjacent table)
d10 in cm This formula is potentially
confusing as it looks like
K is given in cm/s
permeability, but is hydraulic
conductivity – C has units….
How to Measure Permeability

q = K DhL

Measure Volume V over time t

Hydraulic Conductivity is given by

(V / At ) L
K= qL
Dh
= H

K= VL
AtH
Falling Head Permeameter
Volume flow rate in tube is same as in
soil sample

dV æ dH ö Ht
Q= = p r ç-
2 t
÷ = p rs q = p rs K
2 2

dt è dt ø L
dH t H
-r 2 = rs2 K t
dt L

ær ö K
2
dH t
Þç ÷
s
dt = -
èrø L Ht
Solving this differential equation and rearranging

ærö 2
æ L ö æ H0 ö
K =ç ÷ ç ÷ lnç ÷
è rs ø è t ø è Ht ø
 Transmissivity
 We like to think about groundwater in 2-dimensions (like a
map).

 Therefore we like to define the permeability over the depth

of the aquifer (depth b)

 Tranmissivity

T=bK
 Heterogeneity
 Effective Hydraulic Conductivity – We like to replace heterogeneous
blocks with analogous homogeneous ones

K1
VS. K1 K2
K2

 Replace with

Keff

 Are they the same for the two – how would you do it?
 Heterogeneity
 Effective Hydraulic Conductivity – We like to replace heterogeneous
blocks with analogous homogeneous ones

K1
K1 K2
K2

Keff Keff

1æ 1 1ö
(K1 + K2 )
1
K eff = 1
= ç + ÷
2
K eff 2 è K1 K 2 ø
 More Generally
 N parallel layers, each with N perpendicular to flow layers, each
conductivity Ki of thickness with conductivity Ki of thickness
bi bi

K1
K2
K1 K2 K3 K4
K3

N
KN
åb i
N K eff = i=1

åK b
N
bi
i i
åK
K eff = i=1
N i=1 i

åb i
i=1
 Anisotropy

VS.

We therefore usually define a horizontal and vertical hydraulic conductivity

Kh and Kv

Coefficient of Anisotropy Kv/Kh - typically less than 1

 Formally
 Darcy’s Law  q is a vector

q = -KÑh
 K is a symmetric tensor
(matrix) Kxy=Kyx
where

é q ù é K é ¶h ù
K xy ù
q =ê
x
ú K =ê
xx
ú Ñh = ê
ê
¶x ú
ú
 Ñh is a vector
ê qy ú ê K yx K yy ú ¶h
ë û ë û ê
ë ¶y úû
 Sample Problem
You are provided with the following tensor for the hydraulic
conductivity and the following hydraulic gradient. Determine the
magnitude and direction of the resulting Darcy velocity. Units on
the conductivity tensor are meters/second. Provide the final
magnitude in meter per year.

é 0.0004 0.0003 ù
K =ê ú
ë 0.0003 0.0002 û

dh/dx = 0.0013
dh/dy = -0.0021
 Hydraulic Gradient and
Potentiometric Surface
 3 well setup
(1) Draw lines connecting wells
(2) Note elevation at each well
(3) Map distances between wells
(4) Note difference in elevations
(5) Find distance for unit head drop
between wells
(6) Mark even increments
(7) Repeat for all well pairs
(8) Create Contour Lines
(9) Gradient normal to these lines
( )
q = arctan dh / dy
dh / dx
 Hydraulic Gradient and
Potentiometric Surface
 Right Angled Triangle

grad(h) = (dh /dx) 2 + (dh /dy)2

q = arctan( )dh / dy
dh / dx