Estimation of air losses in compressed air tunneling using neural network

This paper explores the capabilities of neural networks to predict the air losses in compressed air tunneling. Field data from the Feldmoching tunnel in Munich were used in this study. In this project, compressed air was used to retain the groundwater and shotcrete was used as temporary support. The final permanent lining was installed in free air. The tunnel passed through variable ground conditions ranging from coarse gravel to sand and clay. Grouting, an additional layer of shotcrete and a layer of mortar were occasionally used to control the air losses. A back-propagation feed forward neural network was trained and used to predict the air losses from the Feldmoching tunnel. The results of the prediction of the air losses from the tunnel using a neural network were compared with the field measurements. Data from different tunnel lengths were used for training. In each case, the trained network was used to predict the air losses during the excavation of the rest of the tunnel. It is shown that, not only can a neural network learn the relationship between appropriate soil and tunnel parameters and air losses, it can also generalize the learning to predict air losses for very different geological and geometric conditions. It is also shown that data from a very short length (50 m in one case) of the tunnel (five data point only, in this case) may contain enough information for the neural network to learn and predict the air losses in the remaining (585 m) length of the tunnel with a good degree of accuracy. This can be of considerable value to tunnel engineers in control of tunneling operations and help them in preparation for possible changes in air losses with tunnel advance, with changes in ground conditions and tunnel geometry and with time. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.