ABSTRACT
We looked at methods of interpolation for calculating the hydraulic head contour lines from wells located
throughout a region. One method we chose to investigate was a relaxation or finite-difference method.
This method required that the hydraulic heads be located on a square grid and can be derived using
elementary numerical analysis. An initial guess was made for the unknown hydraulic head values, and then
passes were repeatedly made through the grid to determine the unknown head values. The calculations
were done using a spreadsheet. Ten methods of initializing the data were tested that simulate varying
boundary and interior date conditions. The resulting hydraulic head values were then used to create
hydraulic head contour maps in Maple. We also obtained data from sites in New Jersey from the NJ
Department of Environmental Protection Division of Hazardous Site Mitigation and ran our model on this
data.