10. Flow Distributions in a Compound Channel with Diverging Floodplains

During flood, the flow distribution in main channel and floodplain is always an important factor for river engineer to model, accordingly, the measures can be taken in the floodplain area. Experiments on diverging compound channel show that the flow distribution in main channel and floodplains are found to be a function of four non-dimensional geometric and hydraulic parameters such as width ratio, relative flow depth, relative longitudinal distance and flow aspect ratio. This paper presents an empirical-non-linear-multivariable regression model by considering the aforementioned parameters to compute discharge distribution in diverging compound channels. The model is developed using discharge distribution data obtained from present laboratory experiments and with the published data of other researchers on diverging compound channels. The predictive strength of the developed regression model is validated using several major statistics. All deployed statistics have indicated that the developed model is highly significant. The outcome for all diverging compound channels resulted in minimum RMSE and MAPE values as 0.0092 and 4.35%, respectively, when the discharge is predicted using the developed multivariable regression model.