Steady subsurface drainage of homogeneous soils by ditches

Subsurface drainage of agricultural land is a method for improved production, a safeguard for sustainable investment in irrigation and a tool for conservation of land resources. An analytical solution for the problem of subsurface drainage of a ponded surface by an array of parallel ditches has been obtained using velocity hodograph and Schwarz-Christoffel transformation. The presented solution is applicable for the two-dimensional steady drainage from a horizontal ponded surface to an array of ditches in a homogeneous and isotropic porous medium. The solution includes equations for the quantity of drainage and the variation in seepage velocity. Thus the solution is a generalisation of Youngs' solution. From this generalised solution, the particular solutions have also been deduced for different cases.