Improving the quality of pumping tests, permeability tests, and predictive methods

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In recent years the applicant has developed or improved several methods to interpret permeability tests, pumping tests, and also reliable methods to predict the hydraulic properties of soils. Forty eight journal papers were published from 2006 to 2012. As a result, the applicant has been active in improving Canadian and US standards. This research work will be continued by developing better solutions to recurrent problems. The long term objective is to improve the reliability of field and laboratory methods to determine parameters that are needed for groundwater and environmental studies, and also decrease the costs. The Grant will be used to train 4 PhD (D1 to D4), 6 MSc (M1 to M6) and 10 undergraduate students, plus postdoctoral fellows, in groundwater engineering. For pumping tests, problems of interfering wells will be tackled by D1, and those of better defining the protection areas around wells in unconfined aquifers by D2. Evaluating how the tracer injection method influences the tracer test results will be examined by M1. The non-linear inverse problem of calibrating drawdown data of pumping tests in unconfined and semi-confined aquifers will be tackled by M2 and M3. Solving all practical aspects of a special new test, involving the radial propagation of a man-made pressure wave starting from a well screen, or from the space between packers, will be tackled by D3. For permeability tests, even if the applicant and his research team have already solved many problems, there are still a few pending ones. M4 will study the case of monitoring wells having screens spanning the water table, with complex transient unsaturated phenomena. M5 will study how the long time-lag of a clay layer influences the data of pulse tests in clay. M6 will investigate how to obtain a capillary retention curve more correct than those obtained with usual equipment, and in a shorter time. Finally, D4 will start from the microscopic level to establish an equation predicting directional permeability with due consideration to anisotropy and internal structure modification during compaction.