Analysis of random characteristics of seepage field by stochastic finite element method

An analysis of 3-D steady seepage field by the stochastic finite element method (SFEM) is performed. The formulas of response variables (water level and hydraulic gradient) in stochastic seepage analysis are deduced based on first order Taylor series SFEM; and then the stochastic analysis of seepage field is performed; and a corresponding program is developed. The permeability tensor of infiltration domain is dealt with 3-D anisotropic random field; and vector separable local average method is adopted for discretization of random field. The number of random variables derived by discretization will be various if the parameters are selected with different values. Finally, an example is given and discussed; the results of random seepage field in cases with different numbers of variables are derived. Then the feasibility of the proposed approach is proved by comparing these results with the results which are derived when the permeability tensor is only dealt with random variable.