Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 383749, 19 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/383749
Research Article

Inverse Parametric Analysis of Seismic Permanent Deformation for Earth-Rockfill Dams Using Artificial Neural Networks

1Faculty of Infrastructure Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning 116024, China
2College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310023, China

Received 27 October 2012; Accepted 3 December 2012

Academic Editor: Sheng-yong Chen

Copyright © 2012 Xu Wang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper investigates the potential application of artificial neural networks in permanent deformation parameter identification for rockfill dams. Two kinds of neural network models, multilayer feedforward network (BP) and radial basis function (RBF) networks, are adopted to identify the parameters of seismic permanent deformation for Zipingpu Dam in China. The dynamic analysis is carried out by three-dimensional finite element method, and earthquake-induced permanent deformation is calculated by an equivalent nodal force method. Based on the sensitivity analysis of permanent deformation parameters, an objective function for network training is established by considering parameter sensitivity, which can improve the accuracy of parameter identification. By comparison, it is found that RBF outperforms the BP network in this problem. The proposed inverse analysis model for earth-rockfill dams can identify the seismic deformation parameters with just a small amount of sample designs, and much calculation time can be saved by this method.