Predicting the discharge coefficient of oblique cylindrical weir using neural network techniques

Cylindrical weir shapes offer a steady-state overflow pattern, where the type of weirs can offer a simple design and provide the ease-to-pass floating debris. This study considers a coefficient of discharge (Cd) prediction for oblique cylindrical weir using three diameters, the first is of D1 = 0.11 m, the second is of D2 = 0.09 m, and the third is of D3 = 0.06.5 m, and three inclination angles with respect to channel axis, the first is of θ1 = 90 ͦ, the second is of θ2 = 45 ͦ, and the third is of θ3 = 30 ͦ. The Cd values for total of 56 experiments are estimated by using the radial basis function network (RBFN), in addition of comparing that with the back-propagation neural network (BPNN) and cascade-forward neural network (CFNN). Root mean square error (RMSE), mean square error (MSE), and correlation coefficient (CC) statics are used as metrics measurements. The RBFN attained superior performance comparing to the other neural networks of BPNN and CFNN. It is found that, for the training stage, the RBFN network benchmarked very small RMSE and MSE values of 1.35E-12 and 1.83E-24, respectively and for the testing stage, it also could benchmark very small RMSE and MSE values of 0.0082 and 6.80E-05, respectively. © 2021, The Author(s).