Title: Application of Excel optimisation tool in solving and teaching water resource problems

Authors: Mohammad Zakwan

Addresses: Civil Engineering Department, MANUU, Hyderabad, India

Abstract: Many realistic problems in water resource engineering are too complex to solve manually. Teaching such complex problems becomes a real challenge especially at undergraduate level, but, civil engineering graduates need to be competent enough to provide practical solution to these water resource problems. Most of the undergraduate civil engineering students are well versed with the knowledge of Microsoft Excel. In the present paper, several water resource engineering problems have been solved using Excel solver. Students may evolve a relevant mathematical algorithm to delineate pragmatic structure of the problem and utilise solver to work out that model for any group of input data. In the present paper, Excel solver has been applied to model channel routing, hysteresis affected stage-discharge curves, infiltration depth, scour depth, determination of optimal channel dimension and critical depth in open channel flow. Apart from simplicity, the other advantage of using Excel (spreadsheet) solver is that the solver does not conceal conceptual formulation of the problem. In this way Excel solver may prove to be a useful tool for teaching water resource engineering at undergraduate level.

Keywords: Excel solver; water resource; civil engineering; estimation; channel dimension; critical depth.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHST.2022.123647

International Journal of Hydrology Science and Technology, 2022 Vol.14 No.1, pp.63 - 74

Received: 09 Jul 2020
Accepted: 05 Oct 2020
Published online: 30 Jun 2022 *

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