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ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #59282
Title: GUIDELINES FOR PRESENTATION OF CANAL CONTROL ALGORITHMS

Author
item SCHUURMANS, WYTZE - TECH UNIV, DELFT, NETH
item GRAWITZ, BRUNO - DELFT HYDRAULICS, NETH
item Clemmens, Albert

Submitted to: International Conference on Water Resources Engineering Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/18/1995
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Water is becoming a scarce resource, and agricultural water users are under pressure to use water more judiciously. For many large irrigation projects, the physical infrastructure that delivers water to users influences their ability to manage the water supplied to them. From a management standpoint, distribution of water through pressurized pipelines would be more advantageous than delivery through canals, but for large-scale systems, canals are singificantly less expensive to construct. Conversion from canals to pipelines, likewise, is typically very expensive. Canal operations, however, can be improved by providing canal operators with better tools for determining control actions. Through field tests on an actual canal, progress is being made on one such tool: computerized automatic control of canal gates. This technology is not routinely available. The tests will determine the capabilities of various controllers, appropriate methods for tuning the controllers, and limitations in field application. The results of this work will benefit irrigation district personnel, consultants, and ultimately, farmers.

Technical Abstract: This paper is one in a series of papers by the ASCE Task Committee on Canal Automation Algorithms to be presented in this proceedings. The purpose of the task committee is to promote the development of improved canal automation algorithms. One group within the task committee developed test cases to be used to test and compare different algorithms. This paper presents the criteria with which to judge the performance of various controllers and the format in which to provide performance results.