Optimal location of pumping wells by a mesh-free numerical method

Abstract

In the present study, the optimal place to excavate extraction wells as the drawdown gets minimized was investigated in a real aquifer. Meshless local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) method is used as the simulation method. The closeness of its results to the observational data compared to the finite difference solution showed the higher accuracy of this method as the RMSE for MLPG is 0.757 m while this value for finite difference equaled to 1.197 m. Particle warm algorithm is used as the optimization model. The objective function defined as the summation of the absolute values of difference between the groundwater level before abstraction and the groundwater level after abstraction from wells. In Birjand aquifer which is investigated in transient state, the value of objective function before applying the optimization model was 2.808 m, while in the optimal condition, reached to 1.329 m (47% reduction in drawdown). This fact was investigated and observed in three piezometers. In the first piezometer, the drawdown before and after model enforcement was 0.007 m and 0.003 m, respectively. This reduction occurred in other piezometers as well.