Determination of Optimum Cross Section of Earth Dams by Using Artificial Intelligence

Earth Dams are one of the most important and expensive civil engineering structures. Cost of construction of these structures directly depends on the needed volume of embankments which in turn depends on their cross section area. Reduction in the cross section area of earth dam causes decreasing in the embankment volume and leads to a significant reduction in the construction cost of these structures. Obtaining optimum cross section for earth dams including traditional design method utilizations in addition to stability and construction aspects, is too time-consuming and almost impossible. In this paper, an Artificial Neural Network and ant colony optimization algorithm have been used to solve this complicated problem which is known as one of the most important problems in geotechnical engineering.