TY - JOUR
T1 - Tidal wave propagation in a coastal aquifer
T2 - Effects of leakages through its submarine outlet-capping and offshore roof
AU - Xia, Yuqiang
AU - Li, Hailong
AU - Boufadel, Michel C.
AU - Guo, Qiaona
AU - Li, Guohui
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, No. 40672167). The authors thank Dr. Xun Zhou for his help. Constructive review comments of two anonymous referees are appreciated.
PY - 2007/4/30
Y1 - 2007/4/30
N2 - This paper considers a leaky aquifer system comprising an unconfined aquifer, a confined aquifer, and a confining layer (the aquifer's roof). The unconfined aquifer terminates at the coastline, the confined aquifer and its roof extend under the sea for a certain distance. The aquifer's submarine outlet is covered by a thin layer of sediment (referred to as the "outlet-capping" hereafter) with properties dissimilar to the aquifer. Previous studies either neglected the leakage through the aquifer's roof or the outlet-capping. This paper considers both effects and gives an analytical solution to describe the tide-induced head fluctuation in the aquifer system. For aquifers with zero or infinite offshore length, or with impermeable roof or outlet-capping, or without the outlet-capping, existing solutions in the literature are obtained. We defined the threshold value for the offshore aquifer length, which was found to be less than 5 km for typical coastal aquifer systems. For an aquifer with its offshore length greater than the threshold, the inland head fluctuation becomes insensitive to variations of this length and the outlet-capping's leakance. The leakage through the offshore roof decreases the threshold value. When the offshore confined aquifer is short, the inland head fluctuation increases with the outlet-capping's leakance. In this case negative phase shift occurs near the coastline only for aquifers with small leakages through the offshore roof and the outlet-capping. In general, the combined actions of the tidal loading, the leakage and length of the offshore roof, and the leakage of the outlet-capping lead to complex, non-monotonic dependency of the inland head fluctuation on the aquifer parameters.
AB - This paper considers a leaky aquifer system comprising an unconfined aquifer, a confined aquifer, and a confining layer (the aquifer's roof). The unconfined aquifer terminates at the coastline, the confined aquifer and its roof extend under the sea for a certain distance. The aquifer's submarine outlet is covered by a thin layer of sediment (referred to as the "outlet-capping" hereafter) with properties dissimilar to the aquifer. Previous studies either neglected the leakage through the aquifer's roof or the outlet-capping. This paper considers both effects and gives an analytical solution to describe the tide-induced head fluctuation in the aquifer system. For aquifers with zero or infinite offshore length, or with impermeable roof or outlet-capping, or without the outlet-capping, existing solutions in the literature are obtained. We defined the threshold value for the offshore aquifer length, which was found to be less than 5 km for typical coastal aquifer systems. For an aquifer with its offshore length greater than the threshold, the inland head fluctuation becomes insensitive to variations of this length and the outlet-capping's leakance. The leakage through the offshore roof decreases the threshold value. When the offshore confined aquifer is short, the inland head fluctuation increases with the outlet-capping's leakance. In this case negative phase shift occurs near the coastline only for aquifers with small leakages through the offshore roof and the outlet-capping. In general, the combined actions of the tidal loading, the leakage and length of the offshore roof, and the leakage of the outlet-capping lead to complex, non-monotonic dependency of the inland head fluctuation on the aquifer parameters.
KW - Analytical solution
KW - Coastal submarine aquifer
KW - Leakage
KW - Leaky boundary condition
KW - Submarine aquifer outlet-capping
KW - Threshold of offshore length
KW - Tidal wave propagation
KW - Tide
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2007.01.036
DO - 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2007.01.036
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:34047248070
SN - 0022-1694
VL - 337
SP - 249
EP - 257
JO - Journal of Hydrology
JF - Journal of Hydrology
IS - 3-4
ER -