PREDICTION OF TBM PENETRATION RATE OF WATER CONVEYANCE TUNNELS IN IRAN USING MODERN METHODS.

TBM has been used extensively in civil engineering activities and plays an important role in tunnelling projects. Hence, the penetration rate of these machines plays a crucial role in the success of their application. Therefore, in order to predict the TBM penetration rate in this study in several water conveyance tunnels including the tunnels of Karaj, Ghomrood, Golab, Nosoud and Sabzkooh, four intelligence techniques including multiple linear and nonlinear regression analysis, Gene Expression Programming (GEP) method, and Support Vector Machine (SVM) were applied. The obtained values of R² and RMSE included 0.43 and 3.08 for linear regression, 0.68 and 2.3 for nonlinear regression, 0.74 and 2.09 for GEP method and 0.97 and 0.6 for SVM method, respectively which were utilized to predict TBM penetration rate. By investigating the tunnels database, the results indicated that the SVM method had the most accurate prediction of penetration rate (in terms of R² and RMSE) and the maximum amount of R² and the minimum amount of RMSE among all predictive modelings. Finally, respecting the amount of R² and RMSE, the other methods like GEP method, nonlinear regression, and linear regression are listed to have the required accuracy in predicting penetration rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]