Estimating bearing capacity of shallow foundations by artificial neural networks

Özet

In this study, the Artificial Neural Network, ANN is applied to data extracted from a large set of random data created by using Terzaghi and Meyerhof formulae. By using MS Excel, 3750 sets of data for Terzaghi's equation, 4000 for Meyerhof's equation were generated. A simulated ANN was trained on a subset of bearing capacity data, and the performance was tested on the remaining data. The performances of the ANN models were compared to Terzaghi and Meyerhof results. ANN models were as accurate as the other techniques in estimating the ultimate bearing capacity. The models estimated the ultimate bearing capacity with an average error of around 1% of the value obtained from Terzaghi and Meyerhof equations, and the coefficient of determination (r2) was almost equal to 1. Their sensitivity and specificity is dependent on the function and the algorithm used in the training process. Validation subset is crucial in preventing the over-fitting of the ANN models to the training data. ANN models are potentially useful technique for estimating the bearing capacity of the soil. Large training data sets are needed to improve the performance of data-derived algorithms, in particular ANN models.