Announcing Updated and Expanded flexAEM Exercise Sets

 Making AnAqSim even easier to learn, and expanding its power

We are happy to announce that, as flexAEM training nears its 10^th year, we have completely updated our series of training exercises. These exercises match the new look and features of AnAqSim Analytic Element Method (AEM) groundwater modeling software, and have been reorganized to make it easier to learn how to build your AnAqSim modeling skills in a stepped and progressive program of training.

In addition, we have added new exercise sets to enhance the speed of building and calibrating an AnAqSim model. These include instructions and example for using the accuracy and spatial data availability of QGIS geospatial analysis software to build your AnAqSim models. And there is a comprehensive introduction that explains and demonstrates how to harness the power of PEST to automatically calibrate and perform parameter uncertainty analyses for your AnAqSim flow models. Both QGIS and PEST are free software that can be obtained from their respective authoring organizations for use with AnAqSim.

Exercises are organized into 15 sets that build in depth and complexity as your training advances (see Figure 1).

 

Figure 1. New reorganized, updated, and expanded flexAEM exercise sets provide a structured way to lead you step by step through the process of learning AEM groundwater flow modeling with AnAqSim.

AEM groundwater modeling holds a number of advantages over numerical techniques like Finite Difference and Finite Element. You don’t have to spend hours or days setting up and tweaking your modeling grid of rectangles or triangles and trying to fit the hydrologic features of your model into that “checkerboard”. You focus on the actual location and geometry of the features themselves, draw them into your model space, and assign them properties. And then when you solve you don’t just get a head value back at your grid block centers or nodes; you can calculate head as a continuous function anywhere in space. This gives you unparalleled accuracy without the computational burden of a super-fine mesh.

The 15 flexAEM exercise sets are ordered from easy to more complex. This allows you to begin with the basics and then progress through more advanced model-building and flow system analysis techniques (see Figure 1). And each set is assembled to contain several exercises that demonstrate the topic, with each exercise containing step-by-step instructions and diagrams, and any needed starting files and basemap files.

This system of self-paced training will have you building a “Hello World” introductory groundwater model in minutes (Figure 2), and can place the efficiency and power of AEM modeling in your hands in days to weeks (Figure 3) depending on how deep you need to go for your initial modeling projects and how much time you can commit.

Figure 2. Simple “Hello World” example lets you build an AnAqSim model in 10 minutes

Figure 3. flexAEM exercises introduce you to AEM modeling concepts and AnAqSim
features such as groundwater flow pathline tracing.

And there is no need to work step-by-step through every exercise, although that can be very helpful in absorbing all that the flexAEM training has to impart. It may speed your progress to start with the basics to understand AEM modeling concepts and the AnAqSim software, and then “skip ahead” to a particular feature or method that you are trying to employ in the model you are developing, read how that is done, and put those tips to use directly into your project model.

Any of the 15 flexAEM exercise sets can be purchased individually, but greater understanding of AnAqSim (and greater savings) can be achieved by purchasing pre-packaged exercise bundles. The entire system consists of over 80 exercises and over 2000 pages of instruction and examples. Purchasing the Ultimate Bundle package gives you all of that at a price that should fit well in any training budget and pays tremendous dividends in the project work that it can support.

In addition, the flexAEM system also makes available software tools to support AnAqSim model building. These include element shape generation software that allows the user to automatically create AnAqSim element vertex locations for a variety of elements line types and shapes, at any scale and any orientation. There is also a set of pre-constructed AnAqSim models that are designed to serve as simple calculator-type tools for designing, or evaluating the performance of, a range of groundwater remediation systems (wells, trenches, slurry walls, caps, etc.).

Please visit the flexAEM website at https://www.flexaem.com/ to view the new updated and enhanced AnAqSim training exercises, and begin adding the ease-of-use, accuracy, flexibility, and power of Analytic Element Method groundwater modeling to your projects today.