ABSTRACT
Soils and rock hydraulics concern the fundamental differential relations for modeling groundwater movement. However, different models describe this movement with its advantages and disadvantages. This book presents specific three dimensional finite difference algorithms to deal with complicated problems concerning hard-rock hydraulics regarding discretized models, without restrictions about anisotropy, inhomogeneity, and shape of discontinuities. The governing equations of groundwater hydraulics adhere to the fundamental assumption of Continuum Mechanics: the continuum concept of matter. From a physical point of view, earth and rock masses are three-phase mixtures, or assemblages, of mineral particles, water, and air combined with a small proportion of other gases. Space and time variations of the state of stress acting on soil and rock masses may modify their solid phase structure and their liquid and gaseous phases’ flow pattern. Practical mass–volume relations describe the relative amounts of the solid, liquid, and gaseous phases within three-phase mixtures.
