Authors: Mostafa A M Abdeen
Publish Date: 2009/01/23
Volume: 22, Issue: 9, Pages: 1830-1842
Abstract
Most of the open water irrigation channels in Egypt suffer from the infestation of aquatic weeds especially the submerged ones that cause numerous hydraulic problems for the open channels themselves and their water distributaries such as increasing water losses obstructing water flow and reducing channels’ water distribution efficiencies Accurate simulation and prediction of flow behavior in such channels is very essential for water distribution decision makers Artificial neural networks ANN have proven to be very successful in the simulation of several physical phenomena in general and in the water research field in particular Therefore the current study aims towards introducing the utilization of ANN in simulating the impact of vegetation in main open channel which supplies water to different distributaries on the water surface profile in this main channel Specifically the study presented in the current paper utilizes ANN technique for the development of various models to simulate the impact of different submerged weeds’densities different flow discharges and different distributaries operation scheduling on the water surface profile in an experimental main open channel that supplies water to different distributaries In the investigated experiment the submerged weeds were simulated as branched flexible elements The investigated experiment was considered as an example for implementing the same methodology and technique in a real open channel system The results showed that the ANN technique is very successful in simulating the flow behavior of the prementioned open channel experiment with the existence of the submerged weeds In addition the developed ANN models were capable of predicting the open channel flow behavior in all the submerged weeds’cases that were considered in the ANN development process
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