A causal-temporal graphic convolutional network (CT-GCN) approach for TBM load prediction in tunnel excavation

This research proposes a novel deep learning approach named causal-temporal graphic convolutional network (CT-GCN) which aims to provide accurate predictions on tunnel boring machine’s (TBM) load parameters. The causal associations among the key TBM operational parameters are detected and quantified with causal effects through the Peter and Clark momentary conditional independence plus (PCMCI+) method. The discovered causality can be further integrated with a deep learning model that consists of graph convolutional network (GCN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) layers for accurate prediction of TBM’s torque and thrust. Data collected from a realistic tunnel project in Singapore is utilized to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The load parameters are predicted with their historical values and another 7 key operational parameters. The results indicate that (1) The proposed CT-GCN approach can achieve a low mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean squared error (RMSE) of 40.90kN∙m and 64.53kN∙m for thrust force (y1) and that of 635.76kN and 1168.59kN for cutterhead torque (y2), respectively. (2) The proposed CT-GCN method achieves 12.86% and 24.38% average improvements in the coefficient of determination (R2) for y1 and y2, respectively when compared with the long-short term memory (LSTM) method and that of 5.62% and 8.60% improvements when compared with the GCN-LSTM method. (3) Compared with correlation-based GCN models, the proposed approach exerts an average improvement of 43.10%, 41.97%, and 22.72% in terms of MAE, RMSE, and R2 for torque and much better performance for thrust estimation. This study contributes to improving the understanding of TBM operation by quantifying the causality among the key operational parameters. It also contributes to developing a novel deep-learning method that estimates TBM’s load parameters with high accuracy.