Optimum Design and Construction of Hydraulic Sections of Parabolic Water Transmitting Channels using the Harris Hawks Optimization Algorithm

Channels have various types of cross-sectional shapes, including trapezoidal, rectangular, semi-circular, parabolic, chain-curved, semi-cubic parabolic, egg-shaped, and circular as the most common shapes. A channel designer has many design options in different conditions, including hydraulic, economic, and hydrological conditions, leakage, etc. Among the above-mentioned sections, the first two have a horizontal bottom while the other sections are curve-shaped with bottom curvature. The primary goal in the design of hydraulic channels is to achieve the maximum flow capacity considering the minimum channel construction cost. A variety of studies has been conducted on the different types of hydraulic channels so far, each dealing with the subject from a certain perspective. However, most of the studies have focused on circular, rectangular and trapezoidal channels. This study has focused on the parabolic channel. Genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) or GRG algorithms and their combination are usually used for optimization. However, this research adopts a novel and updated meta-heuristic algorithm, namely the Harris Hawks Optimization (HHO) algorithm, to optimize the parabolic channel with a fixed roughness coefficient and determine the optimal dimensions of the channel with different flow rates. This channel uses different flow rates, namely 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, and 300 m3/s to solve the optimization problem. Finally, it was found that the lowest construction cost and the highest efficiency for water supply is achieved with a roughness coefficient of 0.015 and a flow rate of 100 m3/s.