A Velocity-Oriented Approach for Modflow

Abstract

When considering three-dimensional groundwater flow, the hydrogeological community widely uses the MODFLOW model based on the head-oriented approach (HOA). However, a great deal of hydrogeological situations requires an extremely accurate assessment of the Darcy velocity in three dimensions. Despite the good numerical approximation of the piezometric head offered by MODFLOW, it does not guarantee sufficient accuracy in estimating all three components of the flow velocity. As an alternative, this article presents the MODFLOW-based velocity-oriented approach (VOA), which can approximate the three components of the groundwater velocity with high accuracy. The article gives comprehensive theoretical background and a comparison of the HOA and VOA approaches. Importantly, the authors show how the VOA equations with the VOA boundary conditions can be implemented and solved with MODFLOW. Recently, the VOA has become a basis for new version of MODFLOW. The two approaches are effectively combined and compared using Visual MODFLOW for a simple case of river–aquifer interaction.

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