Multi-index dominant grouping of rock mass discontinuities based on the combined weighting method: A case study for the Huayang tunnel

Abstract

The properties of discontinuities are determined by their occurrence, trace length, aperture, roughness, and the degree of particle fill; therefore, a multi-index dominant grouping method for rock mass discontinuities based on the combined weighting method was proposed. Firstly, the combined weighting method was used to calculate the weighted value of each index participating in the similarity measurement, and a reasonable elimination of outlier discontinuities is achieved based on the principle of possibility clustering. The adaptive chaotic annealing particle swarm optimization algorithm was then used to search the global optimal initial clustering centers of the fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm. The objective function was established by minimizing the weighted sum of the distance between the discontinuities to be grouped, and the clustering centers to complete the multi-index dominant grouping of rock mass discontinuities. 230 artificial discontinuities with outliers were grouped and compared with other methods, which indicated that this method has higher grouping accuracy. The proposed method was applied to group the measured discontinuities of the Huayang tunnel in Chongqing City, China. Based on the grouping results, a discrete element model for tunnel excavation was established, and the construction was guided according to the calculated results from the model. The engineering applicability of the method was further verified.