NUMERICAL-ANALYSIS OF SALTWATER INTRUSION USING B-SPLINE BOUNDARY ELEMENTS

Continuity of the derivatives of the main variable is an important feature to obtain an accurate representation of moving boundaries with discrete numerical methods, since the value and direction of the velocity are normally used to relocate the nodal points in a time-marching scheme. A recently developed formulation of the boundary element method using cubic B-splines provides up to C2 continuity between adjacent elements. This formulation is applied in this work to saltwater intrusion problems in confined, leaky and unconfined aquifers.