Developing Predictive Equations for Water Capturing Performance and Sediment Release Efficiency for Coanda Intakes Using Artificial Intelligence Methods

Abstract

Estimation of withdrawal water and filtered sediment amounts are important to obtain maximum efficiency from an intake structure. The purpose of this study is to develop empirical equations to predict Water Capturing Performance (WCP) and Sediment Release Efficiency (SRE) for Coanda type intakes. These equations were developed using 216 sets of experimental data. Intakes were tested under six different slopes, six screens, and three water discharges. In SRE experiments, sediment concentration was kept constant. Dimensionless parameters were first developed and then subjected to multicollinearity analysis. Then, nonlinear equations were proposed whose exponents and coefficients were obtained using the Genetic Algorithm method. The equations were calibrated and validated with 70 and 30% of the data, respectively. The validation results revealed that the empirical equations produced low MAE and RMSE and high R2 values for both the WCP and the SRE. Results showed outperformance of the empirical equations against those of MNLR. Sensitivity analysis carried out by the ANNs revealed that the geometric parameters of the intake were comparably more sensitive than the flow characteristics.