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Empirical design in geotechnics

using neural networks

Article in Gotechnique January 1995

DOI: 10.1680/geot.1995.45.4.709

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Goh, A. T. C. (1995). Gt!otechnique, 45, No. 4, 709-714

TECHNICAL NOTE

Empirical design in geotechnics using neural networks

A. T. C. GOH*

KEYWORDS: clays; design; numerical modelling and neurons. The basic mathematical concepts and
analysis; piles; statistical analysis. the steps involved in developing back-
propagation neural network models are well
established and described by Caudill & Butler
INTRODUCTION (1990), Eberhart & Dobbins (1990), Masters
Many geotechnical problems lack a precise ana- (1993), Smith (1993) and Goh (1994a, 1994b).
lytical theory or model for their solutions. This is
usually because of an inadequate understanding
of the phenomena involved and the factors affect- EXAMPLE APPLICATION
ing them, as well as a limited quantity and The application of a back-propagation neural
inexact quality of information available network to evaluate the friction capacity f. of
(Chameau, Alteschaelll, Michael & Yao, 1983). In driven piles is presented. The data were drawn
these situations, engineers generally rely on from load test records compiled by Vijayvergiya
empirical design solutions. The information is & Focht (1972), Flaate & Seines (1977) and
usually gathered, synthesized and presented in the Semple & Rigden (1986) for driven piles in clay.
form of design charts or tables, or numerically The data from Flaate & Seines (1977) relate
using empirical formulae. This technical note uses mainly to timber piles; the others are for steel
a practical example to show the potential of pipe piles. Several of the data are averages of
neural networks to improve the synthesizing of more than one test pile at a site, in order to avoid
the information for the development of empirical giving undue weight to essentially repetitive
design aids. Problem domains in which the results from a site (Semple & Rigden, 1986). The
behaviour of the system is governed by non-linear embedded pile length L ranges from 4.7 m to
multivariate relationships, and where reliable case 96 m, the undrained shear strength s, ranges from
records are available, offer the greatest promise. 9 kPa to 335 kPa and the friction coefficient x is
in the range 0.42-1.73. Most of thef, values were
derived from pile compression load tests after
NEURAL NETWORKS allowance for end-bearing, with unit end-bearing
A neural network is a computational mecha- assumed to be 9 x s, at the pile tip. The
nism able to acquire, represent, and compute a undrained shear strength s, was determined
mapping from one multivariate space of informa- mainly from unconfined compression tests.
tion to another, given a set of data representing However, for very soft and soft clays (s, < 40
that mapping (Garrett, 1994). A typical neural kPa), s, was derived mainly from vane shear tests.
network consisting of three layers of neurons is
shown in Fig. 1. The basic architecture of neural
networks has been covered by Rumelhart &
McClelland (1986), Lippmann (1987) and Flood
& Kartam (1994). The most popular neural
network paradigm and the one adopted in this
study is the back-propagation learning algorithm
(Rumelhart, Hinton & Williams, 1986). Example
patterns are presented to the neural network and
learning essentially takes place through the adap-
tation of the connection weights between the

Manuscript received 26 May 1994; revised manuscript

accepted 10 January 1995.
Discussion on this technical note closes 1 March 1996;
for further details see p. ii.
* Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Fig. 1. Typical neural network architecture

709
710 GOH

Altogether 45 patterns were used for training the patterns that only broadly resemble the training
neural network and 20 patterns (randomly data. The data are summarized in Tables 1 and 2.
selected) for testing the ability of the neural The values of s, and ai listed are the averages for
network to interpolate the correct responses for the embedded pile lengths.

Table 1. Summary of training data

L: D: ff:: S: Measured Predicted Reference

In cm kPa kPa f,: kPa f,: kPa

14.1 15.0 96.0 26.0 27.0 23.5 Flaate & Selnes (1977)
13.0 15.0 102.0 15.0 26.0 19.7
11.7 20.0 54.0 23.0 14.0 19.6
17.5 14.3 87.0 23.0 26.0 21.0
15.9 15.0 49-o 17.0 12.0 16.2
8.1 13.5 37.0 13.0 11.0 14.8
7.7 16.5 32.0 15.0 9.0 15.5
10.0 13.5 33.0 10.0 12.0 13.4
12.0 15.5 39.0 12.0 10.0 14.2
10.2 22.0 19-o 15.0 8.0 14.5
24.2 15.0 146.0 19.0 29.0 23.2
17.1 15.0 109.0 57.0 24.0 38.4
12.7 23.2 38.0 19.0 17.0 16.8
10.0 17.0 82.0 36.0 28.0 27.9
14.3 26.0 89.0 22.0 22.0 21.9
22.5 47.0 60.0 45.0 23.0 27.0
5.5 30.5 44.0 30.0 38.0 24.4
19.2 61.0 142.0 31.0 30.7 33.8 Mansur & Focht (1956)
15.2 35.6 448.0 104.0 109.2 109.8 Cox, Kraft & Verner (1979)
12.2 35.6 718.0 162.0 162.0 167.9
43.9 30.5 162.0 38.0 30.0 29.3 Semple & Rigden (1986)
96.0 61.0 354.0 80.0 44.0 44.4
73.8 61.0 273.0 67.0 47.6 37.6
22.6 76.7 651.0 170.0 192.1 180.7 Pelletier & Doyle (1982)
30.5 32.5 153.0 45.0 29.3 33.4 Darragh & Bell (1969)
45.7 32.5 148.0 52.0 21.8 32.9 Peck (1961)
13.7 32.5 112.0 45.0 42.3 35.1 Woodward, Lundgren &
Boitano (1961)
5.5 16.9 51.6 129.5 76.7 68.2 Tomlinson (1970)
29.0 33.0 105.0 39.0 39.8 26.8 Ravmond International (1982)
12.2 16.8 33.0 16.0 9.9 15.3 Semple & Rigden (1986)
14.0 35.1 59.0 30.0 23.4 23.2 Hutchinson & Jensen (1968)
39.6 27.4 297.0 165.0 80.9 80.2 Peck (1958)
30.5 61.0 91.0 52.0 30.7 29.7 McCammon & Golder (1970)
25-9 32.5 99.0 61.0 34.2 35.7 Peck (1958)
13.1 27.4 80.0 110.0 53.9 59.1 ONeill, Hawkins &
Mahar (1982)
20-4 61.0 105.0 208.0 91.5 92.0 Heerema (1979)
9.1 45.0 54.0 144.0 73.4 75.1 R&den. Petit. St John
k P&k& (1979)
16.8 61.0 87.0 100.0 55.0 58.4 United States Army Corps
of Engineers (1979)
13.7 32.5 112.0 137.0 64.4 72.2 Woodward et al. (1961)
18.3 76.2 115.0 335.0 154.1 154.5 Fox, Sutton &
Oksuzler (1976)
4.6 16.9 43.0 120.5 84.6 64.3 Tomlinson (1970)
33.6 32.5 121.4 35.4 30.4 26.0 Vijayvergiya & Focht
(1972)
33.6 32-5 108.0 48.8 27.1 29.9
20.3 32-5 158.2 112.8 53.0 63.9
30.5 51-o 102.8 24.4 23.5 20.9 Blessev (1970)
 NEURAL NETWORKS 711

Details of the back-propagation program the most reliable neural network model. The
adopted in this study are described by Goh scatter of the predictedf, values versus the mea-
(1994a, 1994b). Training was carried out until the sured f, values were assessed using regression
average sum squared error over all the training analysis as well as by computing the error rate.
patterns was minimized. This occurred after The error rate (Yeh, Kuo & Hsu, 1993) is defined
about 30000 cycles of training. Training time on as
a 80486 33 MHz personal computer was about
ten minutes. The numbers of input and hidden error rate = 1 error,/N, for i = 1, 2, . . . , N,
neurons were varied to determine the most reli-
able model. A single output neuron was used to (1)
representf, errori = J[c (Tj - O,)/N,,J for j

= 1, 2, , N,,, (2)
Results
Experiments were carried out using a number where errori is the error of the ith pattern, Tj is
of combinations of input parameters to determine the target (expected) output value, Oj is the

Table 2. Summary of testing data

L: D: CT:: S,: Measured Predicted Reference

m em kPa kPa f,: kPa f,: kPa

8.0 13.5 27.0 9.0 9.0 13.0 Flaate & Selnes (1977)
9.4 29.3 52.0 29.0 18.0 23.1
14.6 16.0 67.0 29.0 16.0 22.3
11.6 17.5 57.0 27.0 18.0 21.3
9.6 19.2 42.0 15.0 13.0 16.0
21.6 45.7 147.0 31.0 28.8 30.2 Mansur & Focht (1956)
36.9 30.6 149.6 28.2 30.5 25.2 Vijayvergiya & Focht (1972)
66.4 32.5 223.0 60.0 31.2 39.9 Peck (1961)
11.6 11.4 44.0 21.0 13.4 17.6 Kirby & Roussel (1979)
22.9 32.5 91.0 52.0 27.0 32.3 Peck (1961)
13.8 19.0 21.0 21.0 13.0 16.4 Flaate & Selnes (1977)
253 27.4 244.0 185.0 88.8 88.6 Peck (1958)
14.9 52.8 66.0 53.0 27.6 35.4 Togrol (1973)
18.3 32.5 51.0 33.0 32.0 22.3 American Railway Engineering
Association (1950)
48.2 61.0 152.0 64-O 37.8 32.4 McCammon & Colder
(1970)
32.0 21.4 141.0 115.0 59.8 51.1 Endley, Ulrich &
Gray (1979)
13.4 27.0 81.0 22.0 20.0 21.5 Flaate & Seines (1977)
24.2 15.0 147.0 19.0 30.0 23.3
15.5 17.5 80.0 72.0 35.0 42.6
12.8 32.5 110.0 96.0 54.7 58.0 Stermac, Selby &
Devata (1969)

Table 3. Comparison of methods

Method Neural network Coefficient of Correlation Error rate

input parameters
Training Testing Training Testing

Neural network NN2 s,, 0 0.985 0.936 1,049 1,267

Neural network NNZA s 1 L 0.857 0.944 2,909 2,326
Neural network NN3 s,, c,, L 0.981 0.956 1.162 1.278
Neural network NN4 s,, c:, L, D 0,985 0,956 1.016 1.194
Semple & Rigden (1986) 0,976 0,885 1.318 1.894
fi method (p = 0.32) - 0,731 0,704 4.824 3.096
712 30H

modelling the non-linear relationship between f,

and the other parameters.

Comparison with conventional methods

Comparisons were also made between the mea-
suredf, values and the values predicted using the
fi method (Burland, 1973) and the method of
Semple & Rigden (1986). As /I ranges from 0.25 to
0.4, with an average of 0.32 (Burland, 1973), for
these comparisons p was assumed to be 0.32. The
predictions using these conventional methods are
plotted in Figs 3 and 4. Compared with these
conventional methods, the neural network results
in Fig. 2 show less scatter in the data points. The
0
coefficients of correlation of predicted versus
0 100 200 300 measured results and the error rates are sum-
Measured skin friction: kPa
marized in Table 3. They indicate that the neural
Fig. 2. Comparison of predicted (neural network) and network model NN4 performs better than the
measured skin friction
conventional methods.
The main shortcoming of the neural network
methodology is its inability at present to trace
output value predicted by the neural network, N, and explain the step-by-step logic it uses to arrive
is the number of example patterns and N,,, is the at the outputs from the inputs provided. This is
number of output neurons. Experimentation indi- expected to be overcome with further research.
cated that there was no significant improvement
in the error as the number of hidden neurons
increased beyond three. The results for the neural
network models with three hidden neurons are SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
summarized in Table 3. Model NN4 had the The capability of back-propagation neural net-
highest coefficient of correlation and lowest error works to learn multivariate non-linear relation-
rate for the training and testing data. ships by example holds great promise for
The neural network predictions from the train- improving the synthesis of information for the
ing and testing sets for model NN4 with three development of empirical design aids. The back-
hidden neurons are shown in Fig. 2. The results propagation approach was successfully applied to
indicate that the neural network was successful in evaluate the friction capacity of driven piles in

$j
na, 100
a

0
0 100 200 300
Measured skw ir~ct~on: kPa Measured skm frictm kPa

Fig. 3. Comparison of predicted @ method, Burland, Fig. 4. Comparison of predicted (Semple & Rigden
1973) and measured skin friction (1986) method) and measured skin friction
 NEURAL NETWORKS 713

clay from actual field records. As with any empiri- experience and tests. In Design and construction of
cal or statistical regression technique, the neural ofihore structures, pp. 61-73. London: Institution of
Civil Engineers.
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Garrett, Jr, J. H. (1994). Where and why artificial neural
context for which they were formulated.
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purng Civ. Engng Am. Sot. Civ. Engrs 8, No. 2, 129-
130.
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N out number of output neurons Structs & Bldgs 104, Nov., 463-469.
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s,/o: strength ratio Houston 2, 1135-1146.
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