Optimal Design of Composite Channels Under Slope Stability Criterion

Canals are major water conveyance systems used to deliver water to irrigation fields. Due to wide variability of local soil conditions, the stability of designed channel section may not be ensured while implementing the optimal canal sections in the real field. Hence, incorporation of slope stability condition is very helpful to provide stable irrigation channels. This paper presents Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based solutions for optimal design of composite trapezoidal channels after incorporating the slope stability criterion. The method is applied for different soil conditions to show its practical applicability. The solutions are compared with those obtained by a hybrid optimization procedure involving genetic algorithm (GA) and sequential quadratic programming (SQP). The solutions of PSO method are found to be competitive to the existing solutions. This study suggests that the proposed approach for stability constrained channel design is effective and can be used for field problems. Indian Geotechnical Conference – 2010, GEOtrendz December 16–18, 2010 IGS Mumbai Chapter & IIT Bombay