Water Seepage Through Multilayered Anisotropic Hillside

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

A mathematical analysis is presented for the steady‐state saturated flow through multilayered hillsides or soil beddings with a sloping surface. Each soil layer was considered anisotropic in nature, i.e., κ ≠ ξ where κ and ξ are the hydraulic conductivity in the vertical and horizontal directions, respectively. The method of solution is an analytical one and is based on the Gram‐Schmidt orthonormalization technique. Potential and stream functions were obtained and flow nets are presented for two‐layered geometries with varying degrees of anisotropy. The range of values chosen were ξ = (1/25)κ to ξ = 16κ and the equivalent hydraulic conductivities for two soil layers K 1 / K 2 were 1:1, 1:10, and 10:1. The selected cases considered illustrate the significance of the degree of anisotropy on the water flow pattern, the relative flow rate as well as the volume of water passing through individual soil layers. Moreover, the greatest influence on the relative flow rate was when the upper layer was anisotropic rather than the lower layer.