Laura Scesi and Paola Gattinoni
Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Series: Environmental Science, Engineering and Technology
BISAC: SCI026000

Water circulation in rocks is a very important element in the solution of quite typical problems arising in environmental, civil and mining engineering. Still, aquifers in rocks are devoted much less attention than those in porous media, partly because they are considered less important from the point of view of water research, and partly because rock masses are a very complex medium, (heterogeneous, anisotropous and discontinuous), therefore its modelization is quite complex.

This paper proposes a review of the methodologies used for groundawater flow reconstruction in jointed rock masses (mainly based on the recent book written by Scesi and Gattinoni, 2009), describing the most recent researches concerning groundwater flow in rock masses through applicative examples. In particular, the identification of the main flow direction is very important to evaluate the groundwater flowing in the system, still this kind of analysis requires an accurate reconstruction of the hydrogeological conceptual model and a following critical choice of the most suitable modeling approach. (Imprint: Nova)