Modeling of Groundwater Flow Using the Element-Free Galerkin (EFG) Method

The element-free Galerkin (EFG) method is one of meshless methods, which is an efficient method of modeling problems of fluid or solid mechanics with complex boundary shapes and large changes in boundary conditions. This paper discusses the theory of the EFG method and its applications to modeling of groundwater flow. In the EFG method, shape functions are constructed based on the moving least square (MLS) approximation, which requires only set of nodes. The EFG method can eliminate time-consuming mesh generation procedure with irregular shaped boundaries because it does not require any elements. The coupled EFG-FEM technique was introduced to treat Dirichlet boundary conditions. A computer code EFGG was developed and tested for the problems of steady-state and transient groundwater flow in homogeneous or heterogeneous aquifers. The accuracy of solutions by the EFG method was similar to that by the FEM. The EFG method has the advantages in convenient node generation and flexible boundary condition implementation.