Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Memphis, 3720 Alumni Ave, Memphis, TN 38152, USA
2 CIVIL ENGINERING DEPARTMENT AT GAZIANTEP UNIVERSITY
Abstract
Scour around bridge piers is a well-known threat to bridge stability worldwide. It can cause losses in lives and the economy, especially during floods. Therefore, an artificial intelligence approach called artificial neural network (ANN) was used to predict the scour depth around bridge piers. The ANN model was trained with laboratory data, including pier width, flow velocity, particle diameter, sediment critical velocity, flow depth, and scour depth. The data was divided into 70% for training, 15 for validation, and 15% for testing. Besides, the ANN model was trained using various training algrthins and a single hidden layer with 20 neurons in the hidden layer. The results showed that the ANN model with Bayesian regularization backpropagation training algorithm provides a better predicted scour depth with a correlation coefficient (R) equal to 0. 9692 and 0.926 for training and test stages, respectively. Besides, it showed a low mean squared error (MSE), which was 0.0034 for training and 0.0066 for the test. These results were slightly better than the ANN with Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation with R training equals 0.9552 (MSE training = 0.0047), and R test equals 0.838 (MSE test = 0.007).On the other hand, the ANN model with a scaled conjugate gradient backpropagation training algorithm showed worse predictions (R training = 0.7407 and R test = 0.6409). Besides, the ANN model shows better outcomes than the linear regression model. Finally, the sensitivity analysis has shown that the pier width is the most crucial parameter for estimating scour depth using the ANN model.
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