Artificial neural network application to solute transport through unsaturated zone

The unsaturated zone is a significant pathway of the surface contaminant movement and is a highly heterogeneous medium. Therefore, there are limitations in applying conventional convection-dispersion equation(CDE). Artificial neural network(ANN) is considered to be a versatile tool for approximating complex functions. For evaluating the applicability of ANN, numerical tests using ANN were conducted with training set generated by HYDRUS-2D which is based on CDE. The results represent that ANN can estimate the solute transport and the choice of network parameters and generation of training set patterns are important for efficient estimation.