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Title: TEST CASES FOR CANAL CONTROL ALGORITHMS

Author
item KACEREK, TIMOTHY - CENTRAL AZ PROJ, PHX, AZ
item Clemmens, Albert
item SANFILIPPO, FRANCK - GERSAR, FRANCE

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: Standard test cases for canal control algorithms have been developed. These test cases are based on two real canals. Two flow schedules are applied to each test canal, resulting in four test cases. After all four tests are run and the control algorithm tuned, the same four test cases are run again with small changes in canal roughness and gate discharge. These test cases were applied to several different types of canal control algorithms, and some of the test results and performance indicators are discussed.