8-Trade off between accuracy and grid sizes in a groundwater management model.

Abstract

In water resources systems, most of the models are optimum simulation type in which management of resource is the main objective. Generally groundwater management models use governing partial differential equation and the problem is formulated using either Finite Element Method (FEM) or Finite Difference technique (FD). To a certain extent it is seen that in FD as the number of grid points increase the results are more accurate. Accuracy may depend on the parameters of the model, their range, type of formulation, grid spacing, dimensions, etc.

Here an attempt is made to formulate a groundwater system as a distributed parameter model using FD approximations of the governing partial differential equation. The resulting system of simultaneous equations are embedded in a Linear Programming model for management. The problem is formulated for different boundary condition and grid sizes and correlation is made for grid sizes to the accuracy.