A new model based on gene expression programming to estimate air flow in a single rock joint

This paper is aimed to introduce and validate a gene expression programming (GEP) model to estimate the rate of air flow in triaxial conditions at various confining pressures incorporating cell pressure, air inlet pressure and air outlet pressure. To achieve the aim of this study, a series of laboratory experiments were designed and carried out and then a database comprising 47 datasets was prepared to develop new predictive models. A gene expression programming (GEP) model for prediction of air flow was proposed using the prepared datasets. In this regard, a series of sensitivity analyses were performed to choose the best GEP model. For comparison purposes, multiple regression (MR) analysis was also employed for air flow estimation. Several performance indices, i.e., coefficient of determination (CoD), mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE) and variance account for (VAF) were considered and calculated to evaluate the performance prediction of the developed models. Considering both training and testing datasets, the developed GEP model can provide higher performance prediction of rate of air flow in comparison to the MR model. © 2016, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg