Seepage of water transmission channels means waste of water, and is considered an undesirable phenomenon. A proper channel coating design can prevent this phenomenon. For this purpose, it is necessary to analyze the seepage of these channels and based on the results of this analysis, the best channel design is achieved. Since the soil around the channel is unsaturated, there is no possibility to analyze it with conventional methods, and using methods such as semi-empirical equations for estimating seepage gives approximate results. Although increasing the accuracy of field experiments, acceptable and accurate estimation of the seepage at various time intervals can be given, it should be noted that these methods are time consuming and costly. However, using numerical methods, a high volumes of data can be processed in a short time with minimum cost. Therefore, present study discusses numerical analysis of seepage phenomenon considering saturated-unsaturated conditions and assesses the ability of seep/w software model in estimating water seepage of concrete channel of Xiang River basin in China. Comparing these results with experimental results show that the results of numerical analysis is quantitatively consistent with physical models, and our model has a high capacity in estimating the seepage of water transmission concrete channels in the study area.

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