Dimensionless straight line fitting method for hydrogeological parameter determination

Abstract

Aquifers may have alluvium deposits, weathered layers, fractured zones, and karstic formations separately or in mixture forms. Such geological configurations do not allow classical aquifer test applicability, due to a set of underlying assumptions that are not usually valid in nature. In practice, the Jacob straight line method is the most commonly used approach for aquifer parameter determinations. Constant transmissivity and storativity estimations depend on large time-drawdown plots on semilogarithmic paper as a straight line. A common mistake is that the appearance of a general trend as a straight line on semilogarithmic paper is taken as guaranteed for the application of Jacob method. Since Jacob straight line is the large time extension of Theis type curve, there is only one straight line on the semilogarithmic paper that can represent Jacob method, which is based on the assumption that the aquifer is porous and homogeneous. In such a case, the Jacob method slope should equal to 2.3, which shows its validity. Otherwise, a modification of Jacob method is suggested in this paper. The basis of the methodology is a dimensionless type straight line approach for the aquifer parameter assessment. Its application is presented for aquifer test data from Oude Korendjik porous medium aquifer data. The application results indicate that the classical Jacob straight line method might not be valid without a preliminary check. The dimensionless reevaluation of existing data helps to check the validity. The necessary formulations for the modification of the classical straight line method are derived, which reduce to classical Jacob method for a specific set of parameters.