Development of clustered machine learning technique for the modeling of scour profile induced by propeller jets.

In this study novel clustered machine learning (CML) models were developed by applying different base learners including multi linear regression (MLR), adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), classification and regression trees (CART), least-squares boosting (LSBoost), and random forest (RF) to predict scour profile induced by the jet of a propeller. Moreover, the results of CML models were compared with regular ML algorithms. The results show that the tree-based ensemble models, RF and LSBoost, are more accurate than CART. The ANIFS has the worst performance compared with other regular nonlinear methods, RMSE = 17.414 mm. The performance of MLR is also weak, RMSE = 35.63 mm and R2 = 0.088. However, the implementation of CML drastically increases the performance of MLR, RMSE = 15.053 mm, and R2 = 0.871. The CANFIS with RMSE = 8.757 mm, R2 = 0.976, and SI = 0 is ranked as the most accurate model. The results show that CLM enhances the performance of regular ML by up to 59.90%. The application of clustered ML is recommended for other complex problems. Finally, the results show that the derived models trained by other datasets very well predict measured scour profiles which datasets were not used in the training process. • Novel clustered machine learning (CML) models are developed. • Several CML models were used to predict scour profile induced by the jet of a propeller. • The performance of CML were compared with regular models. • The results show that CLM drastically enhances the performance of regular ML. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]