The flow of ground waters around a Zhukovskii sheet pile

Abstract The problem of plane steady-state seepage under a Zhukovskii sheet pile through a large irrigated ground mass underlain by highly permeable pressurized layer, the left semi-infinite part of the roof of which is modelled by an impermeable inclusion, is solved in a hydrodynamic formulation. A constructive solution of the problem is given using the Polubarinova-Kochina method and exact analytic representations are obtained for the characteristic dimensions of the flow scheme. The results of numerical calculations and an analysis of the effect of all the physical parameters of the model on the seepage characteristics are presented. Limiting cases of the flow, associated with the absence of both an impermeable inclusion as well as a backwater in the underlying highly permeable layer, are considered.