Darcy’s

Law and Flow

Philip B. Bedient
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Rice University
Darcy allows an estimate of:
• the velocity or flow rate moving within the aquifer
• the average time of travel from the head of the
aquifer to a point located downstream
Darcy’s Law

• Darcy’s law provides an accurate

description of the flow of ground
water in almost all hydrogeologic
environments.
Flow in Aquifers
Darcy’s Experiment (1856):

Flow rate determined by Head loss dh = h1 - h2

Darcy’s Law
• Henri Darcy established empirically that the
flux of water through a permeable formation
is proportional to the distance between top
and bottom of the soil column.
• The constant of proportionality is called the
hydraulic conductivity (K).

• V = Q/A, V  – ∆h, and V  1/∆L

Darcy’s Law

V = – K (∆h/∆L)
and since
Q = VA (A = total area)

Q = – KA (dh/dL)
Hydraulic Conductivity

• K represents a measure of the ability for flow

through porous media:
• Gravels - 0.1 to 1 cm/sec
• Sands - 10-2 to 10-3 cm/sec
• Silts - 10-4 to 10-5 cm/sec
• Clays - 10-7 to 10-9 cm/sec
Conditions
• Darcy’s Law holds for:
1. Saturated flow and unsaturated flow 2.
Steady-state and transient flow 3. Flow in
aquifers and aquitards 4. Flow in
homogeneous and heterogeneous
systems 5. Flow in isotropic or anisotropic
media 6. Flow in rocks and granular
media
Darcy Velocity
• V is the specific discharge (Darcy velocity).
• (–) indicates that V occurs in the direction of
the decreasing head.
• Specific discharge has units of velocity.
• The specific discharge is a macroscopic
concept, and is easily measured. It should be
noted that Darcy’s velocity is different ….
Darcy Velocity
• ...from the microscopic velocities
associated with the actual paths if
individual particles of water as they
wind their way through the grains of
sand.

• The microscopic velocities are real, but

are probably impossible to measure.
Darcy & Seepage Velocity
• Darcy velocity is a fictitious velocity
since it assumes that flow occurs across
the entire cross-section of the soil
sample. Flow actually takes place only
through interconnected pore channels.

Av voids
A = total area
Darcy & Seepage Velocity

• From the Continuity Eqn:

• Q = A vD = AV Vs
– Where: Q = flow rate A = total cross-
sectional area of        materialAV = area of
voids Vs = seepage velocity VD = Darcy
velocity
Darcy & Seepage Velocity
• Therefore: VS = VD ( A/AV)
• Multiplying both sides by the length of the medium
(L) VS = VD ( AL / AVL ) = VD ( VT / VV )
• Where: VT = total volume VV = void volume
• By Definition, Vv / VT = n, the soil porosity

• Thus VS = VD / n
Equations of Groundwater Flow
• Description of ground water flow is based on:
Darcy’s Law Continuity Equation - describes
conservation of fluid mass
during flow through a porous
medium; results in a partial
differential equation of flow.

• Laplace’s Eqn - most important in math

Derivation of 3-D GW Flow
Equation from Darcy’s Law
z

Vx 
Vx  Vx 
x

y

Mass In - Mass Out =Change in Storage

  
 Vx   Vy  Vz   0
x y z