Application of Ant Colony Algorithm to Optimize the High Pressure Water Conveyance Pipe of Shahryar Concrete Dam

Today the hydro–electric power plants are important sources of energy production. Among the elements of the hydro-electric power plants, penstock is a high pressure pipe and high important that conveys water from dam reservoir or any high head water to power plant turbines. The important of penstock is due to its expensive design and maintenance; so a considerable percent of the construction cost of power plants is allocated to penstocks structure. So optimization of penstock has a great effect on a hydro-electric project cost reduction. Using Heuristic methods to optimum design of different structures has been an important object being studied in recent years. Among Heuristic algorithms, Ant Colony Optimization method is a powerful optimization toolwhich has been considered by researchers in many fields. In this study, the dimensions of penstock were optimized using Ant Colony method. For this purpose on the basis of the selected Ant Colony Algorithm, Shahryar dam (in Miyaneh) was investigated. The results indicated that ACS algorithm has high capability in optimization and can considerably reduce the weight of penstock.