• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• 제20권10호
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• pp.1576-1589
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• 2006

Most of surface water ways in Egypt suffer from the infestation of aquatic weeds especially submerged ones which cause lots of problems for the open channels and the water structures such as increasing water losses, obstructing the water flow, and reducing the efficiency of the water structures. Accurate simulation of the water flow behavior in such channels is very essential for water distribution decision makers. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been widely utilized in the past ten years in civil engineering applications for the simulation and prediction of the different physical phenomena and has proven its capabilities in the different fields. The present study aims towards introducing the use of ANN technique to model and predict the impact of the existence of submerged aquatic weeds on the hydraulic performance of open channels. Specifically the current paper investigates utilizing the ANN technique in developing a simulation and prediction model for the flow behavior in an open channel experiment that simulates the existence of submerged weeds as branched flexible elements. This experiment was considered as an example for implementing the same methodology and technique in a real open channel system. The results of current manuscript showed that ANN technique was very successful in simulating the flow behavior of the pre-mentioned 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.