Variational Principles for Fluid Flow in Porous Media
Shlomo P. Neuman, P.A. Witherspoon · Journal of the Engineering Mechanics Division · 1971
Variational methods are being employed to an increasing degree in solving various types of transport problems. It appears that these methods will have increasing use in attacking many boundary-value problems concerned with fluid flow through porous media. The basic approach is to replace the boundary-value problem by an appropriate variational principle whose minimizing function is the solution to the problem. The material herein develops variational principles for several problems of confined and unconfined flow.