DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW NUMERICAL ANALYSIS METHOD FOR GROUNDWATER FLOW IN ROCKS CONSIDERING FRACTURE NETWORK

Abstract

A new numerical analysis method has been developed for groundwater flow in rocks considering fracture network. In the numerical method, large or high permeable fractures, which greatly affect on the groundwater flow, and the other fractures are modeled as disks and pipes, respectively. The groundwater flow in crystalline rocks can be estimated easily and accurately by using the numerical method.
The numerical code was applied to a fictitious rock mass in which 2, 000 fractures had been generated. The groundwater flow rate was calculated by modeling a few percent of the fractures and the other fractures as disks and pipes respectively. The flow rate was almost the same as the one calculated by modeling all the fractures as disks. As a result, it was considered that the numerical code was validated.