The hydraulic gradient is a vector gradient between two or more hydraulic head measurements over the length of the flow path. For groundwater, it is also called the Darcy slope, since it determines the quantity of a Darcy flux or discharge. It also has applications in open-channel flow where it is also known as stream gradient and can be used to determine whether a reach is gaining or losing energy. A dimensionless hydraulic gradient can be calculated between two points with known head values as:
where
* is the hydraulic gradient (dimensionless),
* is the difference between two hydraulic heads (length, usually in m or ft), and
* is the flow path length between the two piezometers (length, usually in m or ft)
The hydraulic gradient can be expressed in vector notation, using the del operator. This requires a hydraulic head field, which can be practically obtained only from numerical models, such as MODFLOW for groundwater or standard step or HEC-RAS for open channels. In Cartesian coordinates, this can be expressed as:
This vector describes the direction of the groundwater flow, where negative values indicate flow along the dimension, and zero indicates no flow. As with any other example in physics, energy must flow from high to low, which is why the flow is in the negative gradient. This vector can be used in conjunction with Darcy's law and a tensor of hydraulic conductivity to determine the flux of water in three dimensions.