A new algorithm for analytic element modeling of large-scale groundwater flow

This work introduces a new iterative Analytic Element Method (AEM) algorithm for solving 2D steady-state groundwater flow models containing large numbers of head-specified elements (e.g., rivers and lakes). The new algorithm improves convergence of models containing head-specified elements by explicitly computing fluxes of all such features at the start of each iteration. The new algorithm also enables the use of efficient parallel processing on distributed-memory super-computers. The combination of parallel processing and reduced number of iterations significantly extends the size and complexity of problems that can be modeled using AEM. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.