Solar air heater (SAH) is an important device for solar energy utilization which is used for space heating, crop drying, timber seasoning etc. Its performance mainly depends on system parameters, operating parameters and meteorological parameters. Many researchers have been used these parameters to predict the performance of SAH by analytical or conventional approach and artificial neural network (ANN) technique, but performance prediction of SAH by using relevant input parameters has not been done so far. Therefore, relevant input parameters have been considered in this study. Total ten parameters were used such as mass flow rate, ambient temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, fluid inlet temperature, fluid mean temperature, plate temperature, wind direction, solar elevation and solar intensity to find out the relevant parameters for ANN prediction. Seven different neural models have been constructed using these parameters. In each model 10 to 20 neurons have been selected to find out the optimal model. The optimal neural models for ANN-I, ANN-II, ANN-III, ANN-IV, ANN-V, ANN-VI and ANN-VII were obtained as 10-17-1, 8-14-1, 6-16-1, 5- 14-1, 4-17-1, 3-16-1 and 2-14-1, respectively. It has been found that ANN-II model with 8-14-1 is the optimal model as compared to other neural models. Values of the sum of squared errors, mean relative error, and coefficient of determination were found to be 0.02138, 1.82% and 0.99387, respectively, which shows that the ANN-II developed with mass flow rate, ambient temperature, inlet and mean temperature of air, plate temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity, and relevant input parameters performed better. The above results show that these eight parameters are relevant for prediction.

In this paper, a new Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP NN) classifier is proposed for classifying sonar targets and non-targets from the acoustic backscattered signals. Besides the capabilities of MLP NNs, it uses Back Propagation (BP) and Gradient Descent (GD) for training; therefore, MLP NNs face with not only impertinent classification accuracy but also getting stuck in local minima as well as lowconvergence speed. To lift defections, this study uses Adaptive Best Mass Gravitational Search Algorithm (ABGSA) to train MLP NN. This algorithm develops marginal disadvantage of the GSA using the bestcollected masses within iterations and expediting exploitation phase. To test the proposed classifier, this algorithm along with the GSA, GD, GA, PSO and compound method (PSOGSA) via three datasets in various dimensions will be assessed. Assessed metrics include convergence speed, fail probability in local minimum and classification accuracy. Finally, as a practical application assumed network classifies sonar dataset. This dataset consists of the backscattered echoes from six different objects: four targets and two non-targets. Results indicate that the new classifier proposes better output in terms of aforementioned criteria than whole proposed benchmarks.

This article accounts for the development of a powerful artificial neural network (ANN) model, designed for the prediction of relative humidity levels, using other meteorological parameters such as the maximum temperature, minimum temperature, precipitation, wind speed, and intensity of solar radiation in the Rabat-Kenitra region (a coastal area where relative humidity is a real concern). The model was applied to a database containing a daily history of five meteorological parameters collected by nine stations covering this region from 1979 to mid-2014.
It has been demonstrated that the best performing three-layer (input, hidden, and output) ANN mathematical model for the prediction of relative humidity in this region is the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) model. This neural model using the Levenberg–Marquard algorithm, with an architecture of [5-11-1] and the transfer functions Tansig in the hidden layer and Purelin in the output layer, was able to estimate relative humidity values that were very close to those observed. This was affirmed by a low mean squared error ( MSE) and a high correlation coefficient ( R), compared to the statistical indicators relating to the other models developed as part of this study.