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 existence of hydraulic structures in α branched open channel system urges the need for considering the gradually varied flow criterion in evaluating the different hydraulic characteristics in this type of open channel system. Computations of hydraulic

more »

... acteristics such as flow rates and water surface profiles in branched open channel system with hydraulic structures require tremendous numerical effort especially when the flow cannot be assumed uniform. The present study aims towards introducing the use of ANN technique to model and predict the impact of changing water structures' locations on the hydraulic performance of branched open channel system. Specifically the current paper investigates α branched open channel system that consists of main channel supplies water to two branch channels with water structures such as clear over fall weirs and sluice gates. The results of this study showed that ANN technique was capable, with small computational effort and high accuracy, of predicting the impact of changing the locations of two types of water structures on the hydraulic performance of branched open channel system.