| Abstract: | An innovative approach to the approximate solution of stochastic partial differential equations in groundwater flow is presented. The method uses a formulation of the Ito's lemma in Hilbert spaces to derive partial differential equations satisfying the moments of the solution process. Since the moments equations are deterministic, they could be solved by any analytical or numerical method existing in the literature. This permits the analysis and solution of stochastic partial differential equations occurring in two-dimensional or three-dimensional domains of any geometrical shape. The method is tested for the first time in the present paper through a practical application in a sandy phreatic aquifer at the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories, Ontario, Canada. The equation solved is the two-dimensional LaPlace equation with a dynamic, randomly perturbed, free surface boundary condition. The moments equations are derived and solved by using the boundary integral equation method. A comparison is made with a previous analytical solution obtained by applying the randomly forced one-dimensional Boussinesq equation, and some observations on modeling procedures are given. |
