Identification of abnormal operating conditions and intelligent decision system

In earth pressure balance (EPB) shield construction, the "plastic flow state" is difficult to form using the soil dug in the capsule because it can cause three abnormal operating conditions, including occlusion, caking in the capsule, and spewing at the outlet of the dump device. These abnormal operating conditions can, in turn, trigger failure in tunneling, cutter-device damage, and even catastrophic incidents, such as ground settlement. This present paper effectively integrates the mechanism of abnormal operating conditions and knowledge of soil conditioning, and establishes a uniform model of identifying abnormal conditions and intelligent decision support system based on the belief rule-base system. The model maximizes knowledge in improving the soil, construction experience, and data to optimize the model online. Finally, a numerical simulation with specific construction data is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithm. © 2011 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.