Modeling of groundwater flow in porous medium layered over inclined impermeable beds

Abstract

We propose a new mathematical model of groundwater flow in porous medium layered over inclined impermeable beds. In its full generality, this is a free-surface problem. To obtain analytically tractable model, we use generalized Dupuit-Forchheimer assumption for inclined impermeable bed. In this way, we arrive at parabolic partial differential equation which is a generalization of the classical Boussinesq equation. The novelty of our approach consists in considering nonlinear constitutive law of the power type. Thus introducing p-Laplacian-like differential operator into the Boussinesq equation. Unlike in the classical case of the Boussinesq equation, the convective term cannot be set aside from the main part of the diffusive term and remains incorporated within it. In this article, we analyze qualitative properties of the stationary solutions of our model. In the case of p > 2, we study validity of Weak and Strong Maximum Principles as well. We use methods based on the linearization of the p-Laplacian-type problems in the vicinity of known solution, error estimates, and analysis of Green's function of the linearized problem.