A new developed approach for the prediction of ground vibration using a hybrid PSO-optimized ANFIS-based model

Ground vibration is one of the common environmental effects of blasting operation in mining industry, and it may cause damage to the nearby structures and the surrounding residents. So, precise estimation of blast-produced ground vibration is necessary to identify blast-safety area and also to minimize environmental effects. In this research, a hybrid of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) optimized by particle swarm optimization (PSO) was proposed to predict blast-produced ground vibration in Pengerang granite quarry, Malaysia. For this goal, 81 blasting were investigated, and the values of peak particle velocity, distance from the blast-face and maximum charge per delay were precisely measured. To demonstrate the performance of the hybrid PSO-ANFIS, ANFIS, and United States Bureau of Mines empirical models were also developed. Comparison of the predictive models was demonstrated that the PSO-ANFIS model [with root-mean-square error (RMSE) 0.48 and coefficient of determination (R-2) of 0.984] performed better than the ANFIS with RMSE of 1.61 and R-2 of 0.965. The mentioned results prove the superiority of the newly developed PSO-ANFIS model in estimating blast-produced ground vibrations.