Evaluating the Effect of Various Parameters of Protective Spur Dike on Scour Depth Reduction using Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH) and Gene Expression Programming (GEP)

            Spur dikes are one of the common methods to protect rivers against erosion. Scouring around the spur dike is an important factor that can disorder the structural performance. Using protective spur dike is proper technique reduce the scour amount. In this research, the GMDH and GEP model used in order to evaluate and estimate the effect of various parameters of protective spur dike on scour depth around the main spur dike. Important parameters consist of protective spur dike angle (Ө), protective spur dike length ( ), main spur dike length ( ), distance from main spur dike (X), flow intensity ( ) and Froude number ( ) are considered as the model inputs. Results of training set and testing set indicate that GMDH model is better than GEP model as the MAE and RMSE error in the testing set data are reduced from 0.063 and 0.086 (in GEP model) to 0.045 and 0.061 (in GMDH model) respectively. Also, the Nash-Sutcliffe criteria increased from 0.51 (in GEP model) to 0.75 (in GMDH model). In the following, using the GMDH and GEP models and according to the nature of the problems, the equations are suggested to predict the scour depth reduction in the first main spur dike. The results of sensitivity analysis indicate that the most effective parameter in decreasing the scour depth around the first main spur dike is ( ).