Simulation of Groundwater Flow and Sensitivity Analysis for a Riverbank Filtration Site in Koryeong, Korea

A 2-D unconfined flow model is developed to analyze annual variations of groundwater level and bank filtration rate (BFR) for an experimental riverbank filtration site in Koryeong, Korea. Two types of boundary conditions are examined for the river boundary in the conceptual model: the static head condition that uses the average water level of the river and the dynamic cyclic condition that incorporates annual fluctuation of water level. Simulations show that the estimated BFR ranges annually with the mean of 82.4% for the static head boundary condition and with the mean of 78.5% for the dynamic cyclic condition. The results illustrate that the dynamic cyclic condition should be used for accurate evaluation of BFR. Simulations also show that increase of the distance between the river and the pumping wells slightly decreases BFR up to 4%, and thereby indicate that it is not a critical factor to be accounted for in designing BFR of the bank filtration system. A sensitivity analysis is performed to examine the effects of model parameters such as hydraulic conductivity and specific yield of the aquifer, recharge rate, and pumping rate. The results demonstrate that the average groundwater level and BFR are most sensitive to both the pumping rate and the recharge rate, while the water level of the pumping wells is sensitive to the hydraulic conductivity and the pumping rate.