Few shot intelligent assessment method for compaction quality of earthwork considering uncertainty

Abstract

Current practices lack reliable models for continuously assessing compaction quality from limited data, which hinders effective compaction quality control and the acceptance of earthwork. Using material source parameters as inputs for assessment models makes it infeasible to achieve a real-time assessment of the compaction quality in earthwork. These issues have hindered the popularization of emerging intelligent compaction (IC) and intelligent rolling compaction (IRC) technologies. Therefore, this study addresses the need for small-sample training by introducing an uncertainty-based multi-population genetic algorithm fused with a backpropagation neural network model (UB-MPGA-BP), enabling the real-time intelligent assessment of compaction quality based on few-shot learning. In case studies involving high- and low-liquid limit silts, existing models trained on large datasets were notably inadequate for small-sample evaluation tasks. However, the proposed method not only performed well in silt cases but also exhibited high performance in rockfill materials. The analysis revealed that in small-sample scenarios without reliance on material source parameters, the proposed method has the advantages of real-time accuracy, generalization, few-shot data-driven, and simple input parameters, which enable the rapid assessment of compaction quality. The model can potentially facilitate IC/IRC applications in other engineering practices.