Performance evaluation of two different neural network and particle swarm optimization methods for prediction of discharge capacity of modified triangular side weirs

Abstract

Technical design of side weirs needs high accuracy in predicting discharge coefficient. In this study, discharge coefficient prediction performance of multi-layer perceptron neural network (MLPNN) and radial basis neural network (RBNN) were compared with linear and nonlinear particle swarm optimization (PSO) based equations. Performance evaluation of the model was done by using root mean squared error (RMSE), coefficient of determination (R2), mean absolute error (MAE), average absolute deviation (δ) and mean absolute relative error (MARE). Comparison of the results showed that both neural networks and PSO based equations could determine discharge coefficient of modified triangular side weirs with high accuracy. The RBNN with RMSE of 0.037 in test data was found to be better than MLPNN with RMSE of 0.044 and multiple linear and nonlinear PSO based equations (ML-PSO and MNL-PSO) with RMSE of 0.043 and 0.041, respectively. However, due to their simplicity, PSO based equations can be sufficient for use in practical cases.