Europäisches Journal für Experimentalbiologie Offener Zugang

Abstrakt

Optimization of earth dams clay core dimensions using evolutionary algorithms

Marzieh Mohammadi, Gholam-Abass Barani, Kourosh Ghaderi and Sonia Haghighatandish

Slopes stability and seepage of earth dam are two important items to design earth dam core in field of geotechnical engineering. Recently, using of evolutionary algorithms have been widely attracted attentions for optimizing the earth dams. In this study, three evolutionary algorithms including Shuffled Complex Evolution (SCE), Simulated Annealing (SA) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) have been developed to optimize the geometry of Birjand Hesar Sangi earth dam core based on seepage integration, hydraulic gradient, and safety factor of stability constraints. Several parameters including material type, size and shape of the core dam have been considered to perform the optimization process. Furthermore, material volume and dam seepage are two objective functions which are minimized. The results of performances indicated that SCE, SA, and GA algorithms produced 14, 12.8 and 12.4 percent reduction of the dam cost, respectively. Also, the values of the core dimensions, coefficient of stability, leakage from the body, and hydraulic gradient were obtained from alternative evolutionary algorithms. Development of SCE algorithm was proven remarkably prosperous capability in form of 24 percent reduction for material type in dam core and 8.5 percent in shell dam.