Tunnel Design in Rock Masses Under Uncertainty With Reliability Constraints and Natural Gradient Boosting-Based SurrogatesShow others and affiliations
2026 (English)In: International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics, ISSN 0363-9061, E-ISSN 1096-9853, Vol. 50, no 8, p. 3434-3467Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
This study develops a reliability-based framework for predicting and optimizing tunnel stability in rock masses under surcharge loading while explicitly accounting for both aleatory and epistemic uncertainties. A unified dataset for twin circular and square tunnels is generated using Adaptive Finite Element Limit Analysis under the generalized Hoek–Brown criterion. The results demonstrate that probabilistic predictions obtained using Natural Gradient Boosting provide accurate stability estimates together with well-calibrated uncertainty bounds, consistently outperforming multiple baseline machine-learning models. Validation against more than 300 independent Optum G2 simulations confirms strong agreement with numerical benchmarks. A dedicated uncertainty decomposition analysis further shows that neglecting either input uncertainty or model uncertainty can lead to misleading and potentially unsafe reliability estimates, underscoring the necessity of joint uncertainty propagation. Overall, the proposed framework enables robust, uncertainty-aware tunnel design under reliability constraints and provides a practical decision-support tool for rock engineering applications.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Wiley , 2026. Vol. 50, no 8, p. 3434-3467
Keywords [en]
probabilistic machine learning, reliability-based design, reliability-based optimization, rock mass engineering, surrogate modeling, tunnel stability, uncertainty quantification
National Category
Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology Other Civil Engineering Control Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-378548DOI: 10.1002/nag.70285ISI: 001708845500001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105032123719OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-378548DiVA, id: diva2:2048535
Note
QC 20260603
2026-03-252026-03-252026-06-03Bibliographically approved