A procedure of parameter inversion for a nonlinear constitutive model of soils with shield tunneling

The identification of the parameters of a nonlinear constitutive model of soil mass is based on an inverse analysis procedure, which consists of minimizing the objective function representing the difference between the experimental data and the calculated data of the mechanical model. A gradient-based optimization algorithm is developed for estimating model parameters of soils in earth pressure balance (EPB) shield tunneling. The parameter values of the nonlinear constitutive model are searched for by using the Levenberg–Marquardt approximation which can provide fast convergence. The parameter identification results illustrate that the proposed parameter inversion procedure has not only higher computing efficiency but also better identification accuracy. The results from the model are compared with simulated observations. The models are found to have good predictive ability and are expected to be very useful for estimating model parameters for soils in EPB shield tunneling.