Townley, L.R. and Wilson, J.L. (1980), Description of and User's Manual for a Finite Element Aquifer Flow Model AQUIFEM-1, Technical Report No. 252, Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory for Water Resources and Hydrodynamics, M.I.T., 294 pp.

A detailed user's and programmer's manual for "AQUIFEM-1", a versatile two-dimensional finite element model for groundwater flow, is presented. The model is based on the hydraulic equations of essentially horizontal flow, but can also be used for the analysis of vertical cross-sectional flow. AQUIFEM-1 employs the Galerkin finite element technique, with linear interpolation functions and triangular elements. Leakage from an adjacent aquifer, pumping and recharge wells, flowing wells, lateral inflows and outflows, induced infiltration, rising water conditions, evapotranspiration and numerous other boundary conditions and sources/sinks are accounted for. Both steady state and transient solutions for confined, phreatic or mixed (changing status) aquifers can be computed.

The report provides a review of the mathematical formulation of the model and a detailed description of its capacities. Techniques are described for the simulation of springs, agricultural drainage, geologic faults, excavation dewatering and other features of interest to the modeller. Numerous examples are given for horizontal flow models; there are also illustrations of vertical cross-sectional models.