Specific Properties of Groundwater Flows in Heterogeneous Media

Resumo

The paper deals with justification of estimates for solutions of groundwater flow equations in the case of incomplete information on soil permeability. In engineering applications, this problem is treated by means of mathematical modeling and implies a search through numerous alternate distributions of unknown parameters. Usually, these approaches involve, explicitly or implicitly, the monotonicity assumption, which provides an opportunity to reduce the number of alternative calculations. The paper presents some counterexamples to show that the monotonicity assumption, even if it is in agreement with engineering intuition, can be invalid.