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Harmonizing Ghyben‐Herzberg Interface with Rigorous Solutions
Author(s) -
Kashef AbdelAziz I.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
groundwater
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.84
H-Index - 94
eISSN - 1745-6584
pISSN - 0017-467X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-6584.1983.tb00712.x
Subject(s) - aquifer , interface (matter) , shore , natural (archaeology) , groundwater , simple (philosophy) , flow (mathematics) , hydrology (agriculture) , geology , computer science , environmental science , mathematics , geotechnical engineering , thermodynamics , geometry , physics , capillary action , paleontology , philosophy , oceanography , epistemology , capillary number
Ground‐water management in coastal aquifers is becoming highly complex due to the increase in water demand coupled with the threat of salt‐water encroachment. The salt‐/fresh‐water interface produced by the natural flow of the aquifer is distorted as a result of ground‐ water exploitation. The solution of these problems includes several simplifications of unknown effects. This paper deals with the first phase in ground‐water management, namely locating the interface due to natural flow by simple equations which give results practically the same as the rigorous solution. During the last four decades, the use of the Ghyben‐Herzberg (G‐H) principle to determine the salt‐/fresh‐water interface in coastal aquifers was questioned by many investigators due to the neglect of the water movement. Some of the highly complex solutions which were later introduced are reviewed in this paper and compared with the G‐H results for a very wide range of parameters. It has been found that the G‐H principle is valid for practical purposes and that the differences between location of the interface predicted by the G‐H principle and those determined by the rigorous solutions may be less than the differences resulting from small errors in the field records of water levels. For exceptionally high natural velocities and/or for more precision within the zones very close to the shore, two simple equations derived on the basis of the rigorous solutions are given. Each equation is written in terms of the practically popular G‐H solution with a correction factor added. The results of these equations are tabulated in dimensionless values for practical use. Moreover, the extent and size of the fresh‐water lens can be determined from the field records of one or two shallow observation wells. An illustrative example is given to clarify the procedure.