Abstract
The software package HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Center’s River Analysis System) is widely used by the water engineering community to analyze hydraulic systems and perform development planning. Furthermore, it integrates a control module that allows implementing basic controllers. For more complex approaches, developers from the automatic control and artificial intelligence (AI) communities usually design, implement, and test new algorithms using dedicated software such as MATLAB. However, models of hydraulic systems employed in MATLAB are often very simple. The main objective of the paper is to design a simulation architecture by coupling HEC-RAS with MATLAB, thus improving the accuracy of the dynamics of the hydraulic systems considered in the control simulations. The main feature of the MATLAB HEC-RAS interface design is that it allows one to execute customized code at regular time intervals during the simulation. In this way, closed-loop control and optimization algorithms can be implemented and tested. Moreover, the generic interface allows for any configuration of hydrographical systems. The proposed interface is presented in this paper, and the performance of the approach is demonstrated considering two case studies of different nature.
Highlights
Hydrographical networks are large-scale systems and consist of natural rivers and artificial canals
The work performed in this paper aims at contributing to the issue of providing an appropriate interface between HEC-RAS and MATLAB, bearing in mind the first steps carried out in [18]
A MATLAB HEC-RAS interface has been designed to allow for closed-loop simulations of hydraulic systems that make use of advanced control algorithms
Summary
Hydrographical networks are large-scale systems and consist of natural rivers and artificial canals. The authors provide HEC-RAS specifications together with several useful scripts for basic operations, which are illustrated using a complete example Their interface allows MATLAB to control HEC-RAS by considering unique sequences, i.e., hydrographs over long periods of time. The developed interface is a ready-to-use solution that only requires using the MATLAB command window and editing some m-files to automate HEC-RAS computations It deals with any HEC-RAS project-related task, including writing, reading, and extracting results, allowing the user to focus on the control algorithm and the results. Note that the main contribution with regard to the state-of-the-art is the set of codes employed by the interface to allow for the exchange of information between MATLAB and HEC-RAS As stated before, these are offered as a ready-to-use solution and are accompanied by exhaustive supporting documentation that provide insight on the potential of the solution. 4 illustrates the approach by considering two case studies (a canal and a river) and three scenarios, which allows to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach
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