One of the most important subjects of hydraulic engineering is the reliable estimation of the transverse distribution in the rectangular channel of bed and wall shear stresses. This study makes use of the Tsallis entropy, genetic programming (GP) and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) methods to assess the shear stress distribution (SSD) in the rectangular channel. To evaluate the results of the Tsallis entropy, GP and ANFIS models, laboratory observations were used in which shear stress was measured using an optimized Preston tube. This is then used to measure the SSD in various aspect ratios in the rectangular channel. To investigate the shear stress percentage, 10 data series with a total of 112 different data for were used. The results of the sensitivity analysis show that the most influential parameter for the SSD in smooth rectangular channel is the dimensionless parameter B/H, Where the transverse coordinate is B, and the flow depth is H. With the parameters (b/B), (B/H) for the bed and (z/H), (B/H) for the wall as inputs, the modeling of the GP was better than the other one. Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that the use of GP and ANFIS algorithms is more effective in estimating shear stress in smooth rectangular channels than the Tsallis entropy-based equations.

Accurate prediction of sediment scour hole dimensions downstream of hydraulic structures, e.g. the outlet bucket, is a complex and not straight forward engineering problem encountered worldwide. Dimensions of a scour hole are usually determined by empirical equations which their validation is limited by experimental conditions. As constructing physical models has its own difficulty, determining of scour hole parameters has been applied in this paper for a collection of previous experimental studies. Two artificial intelligence techniques (ANN & ANFIS) are used and the results are compared with empirical equation for maximum scour holes using nonlinear regression method. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) simply represents interconnection of neurons, each of which carries out the task of combining the input, determining its strength by comparing the combination and finding out the result. On the other hand, ANFIS is a hybrid scheme which uses the learning capability of the ANN to derive the fuzzy rules with membership functions. The results showed that maximum error caused by applying ANFIS techniques in estimating scour hole dimensions was 5.2 percent while the error in neural network model was 10.38 percent. The significance of different parameters was discussed and a simple, innovative formula was proposed. This formula is an interesting tool for the engineering community due to its preferences for estimating the parameters of complex phenomena like erosion procedures. It has been established that scour estimations could be improved if soft computation is used in place of the traditional formulae.