Elastic–plastic model identification for rock surrounding an underground excavation based on immunized genetic algorithm

To compute the stability of underground engineering, a constitutive model of surrounding rock must be identified. Many constitutive models for rock mass have been proposed. In this model identification study, a generalized constitutive law for an elastic–plastic constitutive model is applied. Using the generalized constitutive law, the problem of model identification is transformed to a problem of parameter identification, which is a typical and complicated optimization. To improve the efficiency of the traditional optimization method, an immunized genetic algorithm that is proposed by the author is applied in this study. In this new algorithm, the principle of artificial immune algorithm is combined with the genetic algorithm. Therefore, the entire computation efficiency of model identification will be improved. Using this new model identification method, a numerical example and an engineering example are used to verify the computing ability of the algorithm. The results show that this new model identification algorithm can significantly improve the computation efficiency and the computation effect.