Prediction model of service life for tunnel structures in carbonation environments by genetic programming

It is important to study the problem of durability for tunnel structures. As a main influence on the durability of tunnel structures, carbonation-induced corrosion is studied. For the complicated environment of tunnel structures, based on the data samples from real engineering examples, the intelligent method (genetic programming) is used to construct the service life prediction model of tunnel structures. Based on the model, the prediction of service life for tunnel structures in carbonation environments is studied. Using the data samples from some tunnel engineering examples in China under carbonation environment, the proposed method is verified. In addition, the performance of the proposed prediction model is compared with that of the artificial neural network method. Finally, the effect of two main controlling parameters, the population size and sample size, on the performance of the prediction model by genetic programming is analyzed in detail.