HYDRAULIC CONTAINMENT DESIGN PROJECT

I will describe a semester-long project involving the design of a hydraulic containment system for a hypothetical contaminated site. The project weaves together several topics from an introductory hydrogeology course including hydraulic head, hydraulic gradients and flow direction, Darcy's law, hydraulic properties of porous materials, permeameter tests, and several topics in well hydraulics, including pump test, slug tests, and superposition. I developed a synthetic, heterogeneous aquifer, and performed numerical slug and pumping tests. Students analyze data from these numerical tests, along with head measurements and well logs, to obtain estimates of hydraulic properties that are representative of the spill site. They then use these properties to design a hydraulic containment system. Components of the project are completed throughout the semester as students learn the concepts needed to analyze and interpret the data. In addition to learning how to analyze and interpret data, students learn about uncertainty and spatial variability in aquifer properties, and they see the interconnectedness of the course topics and how they can be applied. In addition, students learn to discriminate among the various data types and measurement scales to obtain representative property values for their design.