Abstract—In water flow in porous media such as earth dams,
the location of free surface as a boundary between saturated
and partially saturated zones is of a great importance. The
well-developed finite-element and finite-difference methods are
the most popular techniques to locate the free surface of water.
Each of which is of merits and drawbacks. In this paper, a new
numerical scheme so called the scaled boundary finite-element
method (SBFEM) is employed. This technique combines the
advantages of both finite-element method (FEM) and boundary
element method. Only the boundary is discretized, anisotropic
materials and non-homogenous materials satisfying similarity
can be modeled without additional computational efforts. Two
examples are addressed and the results are compared with the
results obtained from the FEM. High accuracy and versatility
of the SBFEM is demonstrated. The procedure can be directly
applied to other engineering problems with moving boundaries
such as ice melting.
Index Terms—Free surface, seepage, scaled boundary
finite-element method, unconfined flow.
M. H. Bazyar is with the Geotechnical Engineering in Department of
Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Yasouj University, Yasouj, Iran
(e-mail: mhbazyar@yu.ac.ir ).
A. Talebi is with the Yasouj University of Geotechnical Engineering at
Yasouj University, Iran (e-mail: abas_taleby@yahoo.com ).
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Cite:Mohammad Hossein Bazyar and Abbas Talebi, "Locating the Free Surface Flow in Porous Media Using the Scaled Boundary Finite-Element Method," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 5, no. 2 pp. 155-160, 2014.
