Abstract

In rivers and streams aeration of water flows is very important to the quality and existence of aquatic life. Aeration is the process by which the area of contact between water and air is increased, either by natural methods or by mechanical devices. It is important in aeration process by which the area of contact and contact time between water and air. Increasing the contact time of air bubbles is proportional with penetration depth of air bubbles. In this study, the penetration depth of air bubbles entrained by sharp crested weirs is modeled by using the adaptive network based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). The obtained model was tested with experimental data. There was a good agreement between model and experimental data. Test results showed that ANFIS can be used to estimate the penetration depth of air bubbles entrained by sharp crested weirs.

Key words: Sharp crested weir, aeration, penetration depth, ANFIS.