GROUND WATER AND

HYDRAULICS
MODULE 2 : FUNDAMENTALS OF
GROUND WATER FLOW
 1. SPECIFIC YIELD (Sy)

It should be noted that fine grained materials yield little water,

where as coarse grained material permit a substantial release of
water and hence serve as aquifers.
2. SPECIFIC RETENTION (Sr)

Specific retention is defined as the ratio of volume of water it will

retain after saturation against the force of gravity to its own
volume.
(Sr= Wr/ V)

Where,
Wr - volume occupied by retained water.
V- Bulk volume of the soil or rock.

Volume of water is retained by molecular and surface tension

forces against the force of gravity, the specific retention
increases with decrease grain size.
POROSITY (n)
 4. STORAGE
COEFFICIENT/STORATIVITY (S)

Storage coefficient of an aquifer is the

volume of water discharged from a
unit prism, i.e., vertical column of
aquifer standing on a unit area of
aquifer storage (1m2) per unit change
in head/depth(1m).

The storage coefficient is a

dimensionless quantity.

In confined aquifers the value ranges

from - 0.00005 to 0.005
In unconfined aquifers the value
ranges from – 0.05 to 0.30
PERMEABILITY
Co-efficient of Permeability/ Hydraulic
Conductivity
 INTRINSIC PERMEABILITY
It is the property of porous media only, and is independent of
fluid properties.
It has a unit of m2
It can also be expressed in unit called Darcy.
(1 Darcy=9.87x 10-9 cm2)
Can be related to Hydraulic conductivity K by:
K=k(ρ g/µ)
Transmissivity /Transmissibility