Application of Fractional Differential Equations in Analysis of Seepage Line in Coarse Porous Media

In this study, the fractional-order differential equations in range of (0,1) were used to model the water surface profile under Darcy's law condition in porous medium for a fully developed turbulent flow. The developed equation is solved analytically. The laboratory model used in this study consists of a coarse-grained porous medium with 6.4 m length, 0.8 m width and 1 m height, including rounded corner materials, which are tested for different flow rates and three longitudinal slopes of 0, 4, 20.3%. Then, parameters of model and porous media were calibrated based on laboratory data. In order to evaluate the proposed analytical solution, the obtained results from fractional-order differential model were compared with the laboratory data. The results showed a satisfactory agreement with experimental data of water surface profile (seepage line) in all three slopes. The maximum error of the proposed model is 3.5% compared to the experimental data. It can be concluded that the proposed method can provide better description of water surface profile analysis under non-Darcy flow conditions as compared to Darcy model in porous media.