Centralized Scheduling Logic for Canal Operation

Abstract

Many schemes and devices have been developed and tested during the past three decades for automatic control of canal networks. Most of these have used local flow criteria to determine gate settings. Computer simulation of transient canal hydraulics has also been used to help test some of the ideas for canal automation, and in some cases the simulations have been applied directly to canal operation. In this paper, a centralized gate‐scheduling logic for a transient hydraulic model is presented, and a sample comparison between the centralized logic, and one form of a local‐gate‐scheduling scheme, is given. The centralized approach to canal operation is shown to be significantly more stable than the local approach, with minimal fluctuations in target flow levels.