Neural Prediction of Tunnels’ Support Pressure in Elasto-Plastic, Strain-Softening Rock Mass

Abstract

The prediction of the support pressure (Pi) and the development of the ground reaction curve (GRC) are crucial elements of the convergence–confinement procedure used to design underground structures. In this paper, two different types of artificial neural networks (ANNs) are used to predict the Pi of circular tunnels in elasto-plastic, strain-softening rock mass. The developed ANNs consider the stress state, the radial displacement of tunnel and the material softening behavior. Among these parameters, strain softening is the parameter of the deterioration of the material’s strength in the plastic zone. The analysis also presents separate solutions for the Mohr–Coulomb and Hoek–Brown strength criteria. In this regard, multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and radial basis function (RBF) ANNs were successfully applied. MLP with the architectures of 15-5-10-1 for the Mohr–Coulomb criteria and 17-5-15-1 for the Hoek–Brown criteria appeared optimum for the prediction of the Pi. On the other hand, the RBF networks with the architectures of 15-5-1 for the Mohr–Coulomb criterion and 17-3-12-1 for the Hoek–Brown criterion were found to be the optimum for the prediction of the Pi.