Multi-agent based safety computational experiment system for shield tunneling projects
Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management
ISSN: 0969-9988
Article publication date: 3 August 2020
Issue publication date: 21 September 2020
Abstract
Purpose
In shield tunneling projects, human, shield machine and underground environment are tightly coupled and interacted. Accidents often occur under dysfunctional interactions among them. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a multi-agent based safety computational experiment system (SCES) and use it to identify the main influential factors of various aspects of human, shield machine and underground environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The methods mainly comprised computational experiments and multi-agent technologies. First, a safety model with human-machine-environment interaction consideration is developed through the multi-agent technologies. On this basis, SCES is implemented. Then computational experiments are designed and performed on SCES for analyzing safety performance and identifying the main influential factors.
Findings
The main influential factors of two common accidents are identified. For surface settlement, the main influential factors are ranked as experience, soil density, soil cohesion, screw conveyor speed and thrust force in descending order of influence levels; for mud cake on cutter, they are ranked as soil cohesion, experience, cutter speed and screw conveyor speed. These results are consistent with intuition and previous studies and demonstrate the applicability of SCES.
Practical implications
The proposed SCES provides comprehensive risk factor identification for shield tunneling projects and also insights to support informed decisions for safety management.
Originality/value
A safety model with human-machine-environment interaction consideration is developed and computational experiments are used to analyze the safety performance. The novel method and model could contribute to system-based safety research and promote systematic understanding of the safety performance of shield tunneling projects.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant (Nos. 71821001, 71390524, and 71771096), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) (No. 2019109). The authors are grateful for that sponsorship and support, as well as grateful to the anonymous reviewers, whose valuable comments and suggestions have considerably improved this paper.
Citation
Lu, H., Qi, J., Li, J., Xie, Y., Xu, G. and Wang, H. (2020), "Multi-agent based safety computational experiment system for shield tunneling projects", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 27 No. 8, pp. 1963-1991. https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-12-2019-0726
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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