Simulation of Automatic Canal Control Systems

Abstract

Simulation models for unsteady open channel flows have been commercially available for more than 2 decades. Most of these models are now available for personal computers and can be used to study the control of irrigation canals. Studies on automatic control methods and algorithms have been performed on at least half a dozen of the available unsteady-flow simulation models. Although, many of these automation studies have been conducted by the institution that created the simulation model, these simulation models were not created with automatic gate control in mind, and thus one has to be intimately familiar with the source code in order to implement sophisticated control features. Three commercially available unsteady-flow simulation software packages that allow automatic control of gates based on algorithms written by users are: