Delayed drainage of aquitard in response to sudden change in groundwater level in adjacent confined aquifer: Analytical and experimental studies

The problem of the groundwater dynamics and water balance of a confined aquifer in the aquifer system has been solved in previous studies, whereas that in the aquitard adjacent to the confined aquifer has seldom been considered. In reality, the groundwater dynamics of the aquitard are closely related to the exploitation of groundwater resources, groundwater contamination, underground storage utilization and land subsidence. In this paper, an analytical solution is derived to describe the drawdown variation in the aquitard when the head in the adjacent confined aquifer declines by a constant value. The characteristics of groundwater dynamics and water balance of the aquitard are analyzed using a dimensionless analytical solution. There is obvious delayed behavior in the response of groundwater dynamics in the aquitard, which is characterized by the delay index τ ₀. The delayed behavior in the response of groundwater dynamics is not only dependent on the properties of the aquitard, but also proportional to the square of the thickness of the aquitard. The law of the delayed release of water is described in terms of the ratio of the delayed release of water. A water balance equation for the aquitard is established. Three stages of the water balance and the corresponding characteristics are presented with the water balance curves of the aquitard. The analytical solution is given to analyze the flux per unit horizontal area of the aquitard. The hydrogeological parameters of the aquitard, namely the hydraulic conductivity, specific storativity and hydraulic diffusivity, are estimated according to type-curve fitting between the analytical solution and observed flux. The parameters are identified and validated in an experiment.