The effects of splitters on the downstream scour hole of overflow spillways: application of support vector regression

Abstract

Abstract One of the most effective ways to reduce the water jet erosion power during dam overflow is to use splitters on the lower side of the spillway. The dimensions of scouring holes and their location in the dam basin should be accurately determined. Experimental models and data-driven techniques can be effectively used for estimating the dimensions of scouring holes. The focus of this paper is evaluating the effects of splitters on the downstream scour hole of overflow spillways and providing an optimized splitter configuration. The Support Vector Regression (SVR) method performance in predicting the scour hole dimensions and its location downstream of the dam has been examined using 116 experimental data. In order to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed model, we used different statistical measures. The results show that the presence of splitters decreases the slope of downstream scouring in all situations. It is also shown that the SVR method can accurately estimate the dimensions of the scour hole and its location.