Proceedings of Indian Geotechnical Conference

December 13-15,2012, Delhi (F613)

PARTICLE SIZE BASED ASSESSMENT OF SOIL USING NEURAL NETWORK MODELING

TECHNIQUE

Yeetendra Kumar, Research Scholar, MNNIT, Allahabad, e-mail: yeetendra@rediffmail.com

K. Venkatesh, Assistant Professor, MNNIT, Allahabad, e-mail: venkatesh@mnnit.ac.in
Vijay Kumar, Research Scholar, MNNIT, Allahabad, e-mail: vijay03c34@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Acquaintance of particle sizes and its percentage provides basis for indexing the soil. Attempts are made to use
percentage finer than particle sizes ranging 2 mm, 0.075 mm, 0.002 mm in combination with other properties like consistency
characteristics to define specific soil class. The selection of sizes is based on their part in defining boundary conditions
between sand, silt and clay. The study is limited to fine grained soils only because bore log chart referred for input and target
parameters is pertaining to sites, in general, situated in plane area abundant in said soil. The main goal of ongoing study is to
develop a sense of adopting neural networks for supplementing time-consuming laboratory methods. Bore log chart for three
different sites were collected and further data were divided into potential input and target vectors. Using comprehensive
arrangement of input vectors or applying different permutation and combinations ANN models were developed. Multilayer
feed forward neural network trained with back propagation algorithm used for ANN modeling. Obtained results were in
satisfactory agreement with Indian standard soil classification criterion.

Key Words: Input/target vectors, artificial neural network, back propagation learning algorithm.

INTRODUCTION of the any target parameter [10]. In its simplest form ANN
The prime objective of soil classification is to obtain consist three layers; first is Input layer; second is a hidden
information of engineering behavior of soil such that it may layer consisting neurons for processing and third is a output
be referred for relevant engineering purposes or otherwise layer. These layers connect to each other by connection
degree of modification may be determined for specific use. weights, which are adjustable in nature. The characteristics of
Almost all countries either adopts ASTM E 11-1961in its a neural network come from the activation function and
original form as standard soil classification system or develop connection weights [11]. Out of many available neural
own classification system with slight amendments in it. The networks feed forward (which is used in this study) network
sole reason of correction is to give place locally available soil trained with back propagation learning algorithm is described
in classification system. Classification of soil based on below.
plasticity characteristics requires conducting a series of
laboratory experiments {sieve analysis (IS: 460-1962),
hydrometer analysis, liquid limit test (IS: 9259-1979) and
plastic limit test} subsequently placement of results in
respective category to determine specific class. Present
work is an effort to examine the learning ability of ANN in
defining specific soil class such that conventional method
may supplemented with computational method. Some pioneer
work on soil classification employing ANN technique [1,2]
uses single and multi-dimensional output system, driven from
them the prime objective of this paper is to compare both
system, however to enhance the learning ability of ANN and
use of bore-log information in classification, input space is
increased many folds.

Other than soil classification ANN found its way in reliability Fig. 1 Back propagation neural network
analysis of structures [3]; swell pressure and soil suction
behavior [4]; site characterization [5]; soil structure The output from Jth node from hidden layer in fig 1;
interaction [6]; slope stability estimation [7]; stress strain
behavior [8], stress history of clayey soil [9] etc.
(1)
BACK PROPAGATION NEURAL NETWORKS
ANNs are parallel processors that work on the principle of Where,
biological neurons in human brain. The advantage of this i & j presents input and hidden nodes respectively
method is its multidimensional nonlinear mapping capability
Yeetendra Kumar, K. Venkatesh & Vijay kumar
oj is o/p from the jth hidden node
xi is i/p introduced to node i
wij is the synaptic weight on the link between i th input and jth
o/p node
bj is the bias applied at the jth hidden node
The activation function for the j th hidden node may be
determined using the sigmoid (or any other) function.
(2)
The o/p from the kth node may obtained by
CL & CI soils were abundant in all three sites whereas CL-
ML was less to absent in site B and C respectively. In respect
of these, three-soil classes some soil parameters that were
used as input vectors are physical properties, SPT- N value,
percentage finer and consistency characteristics. It is
customary that all properties of soil are determined on
particular depth hence it is also included in input parameter.
Standard notations considered for these geotechnical
parameters were d for depth, N for SPT-N value; w for
moisture content, ρb for bulk density; Dx for percentage of
particle finer than 2 mm; Dy for 0.075mm; Dz for 0.002 mm:
wL liquid limit and wp plastic limit. Table 1 shows range of
input parameters for all three sites collectively.

Table1-Range of input parameters

(3)
Input Parameters Minimum Maximum
Depth(m) 01.50 09.00
Where, SPT-N value(No.) 02.00 50.00
wjk = is the synaptic weight on the link between j th hidden Natural water content (%) 03.18 34.60
node and kth o/p node Bulk density (gm/cm3) 01.40 02.32
Bk is the bias applied at the kth o/p node % finer than 2 mm(%) 59.00 100.0
% finer than 0.075 mm(%) 46.60 98.78
The activation function vk for the o/p node k is % finer than 0.002 mm(%) 02.70 26.51
Liquid Limit (%) 25.00 46.00
Plastic Limit (%) 09.00 26.00
(4)
DEMARKATION OF SOIL CLASS

The error at the kth o/p node is obtained by One- Dimensional Output System
For coding the soil with respect to their soil class designation,
(5) two policies were developed. Table 2 gives the details of first
coding policy. Each soil class allotted certain numbers in
increasing order of clay content. Demarcation values fell
Correction to the weight on link between j th hidden node and within limits of activation function and output ranges were
kth o/p node during lth iteration is predefined such that decoded value from validation output
may easily be classified.
(6)
Table 2 Coding of soil class
Where,
Soil Class Coded Value Output Range
η is learning rate which determines the size of weight
CL-ML 0.1 0.00-0.2
adjustment.
CL 0.3 0.21-0.4
α is the momentum factor and used to change the weight by
CI 0.5 04.1-0.6
speeding up the convergence
W (l-1) is weight during (l-1) iteration. This iteration continues
Three- Dimensional Output System
until Mean Square Error reaches its minimum value.
Table 3 shows second coding policy i.e. a three-dimensional
DATA SELECTION
Table 3 Learning paradigm for 3-D output system
Three different sites rich in clay and silt content whereas less
to negligible amount of sand portion used for model Parameters Training Data Pairs
development. For the same reason, study is confined to d 1.5 6 6
frictional - cohesive (c-φ) soils only. For the sake of N 11 39 22
simplicity, these sites designated with name A, B & C. w 5.3 14 16.3
According to IS 1498: 1970, Three types of soil namely CL- ρb 1.8 1.92 1.91
ML (inorganic clays with less amount of inorganic silt & Dx 100 99.9 96.9
very fine sand), CL (inorganic clays with low Dy 46.6 93 84.9
compressibility) and CI (inorganic clays with medium Dz 6 22 19
compressibility) were available from these sites. In particular, wL 26 33 36
 Particle size based assessment of soil using artificial neural network modeling technique
wP 21 19 21 There exists many ways to improve the rate of convergence
Soil Class CL-ML CL CI one of them is normalization, therefore datasets were
Three-Dimensional 0.9 0.1 0.1 normalized using following equation [14, 15, 16].
Output 0.1 0.9 0.1
0.1 0.1 0.9

output system. These three dimensional target matrixes were

used for training the network. These matrixes developed
separately for all three sites. To separate the output signal
from each other, the target matrix of all three-soil class
defined keeping much difference within values almost like in
binary system. Instead of using 0 or 1 here used values 0.1
and 0.9 so that output may range between 0 to 1.
SELECTION OF NETWORK ARCHITECTURE
Feed forward network with single hidden layer of varying
numbers of neurons (4 to 14) employed in the analysis.
Figure 2 describes the way network treated from given set of
input and target parameters.
(7)
The ANN toolbox in MATLAB 7.10 (R2010a) computer
added software utilized to perform the necessary computation
in which learning rate (LR) and momentum term kept
constant whereas connection weights kept adjustable for all
the models. Range of training parameters were set at Epochs
1000;Time - Infinite; Goal - Zero; Validation Checks - 0
to1000; Gradient - 1 to 1e-10 and Mu - 0.001 to 1e+10.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
ANNs have feature of automatically dividing data into
training testing and validation sets. In present case 60% of
total data was reserved for training and remaining 40% data
was equally divided for testing and validation by ANN itself.
In addition, certain datasets reserved for all three sites to
validate the developed models externally. Table 4 shows
predicted soil class for some of above said reserved data. It
was observed that network 9-10-1 (10 neurons in hidden
layer) gave better results for all three sites. Table 2 may refer
to decode soil class in its original form for one-dimensional
output.

Table 4 Predicted soil class for One-Dimensional system

Actual Predict- Actual Predict- Actual Predict-
Soil ed Soil Soil ed Soil Soil ed Soil
Class Class Class Class Class Class
Site A Site B Site C
0.3 0.3052 0.3 0.2985 0.5 0.4950
0.1 0.1464 0.3 0.3008 0.3 0.3000
0.3 0.2987 0.3 0.2939 0.3 0.3000
Figure 2 Neural network with 9 x n x 1/3 architecture 0.5 0.4789 0.3 0.2982 0.3 0.3000
0.5 0.4897 0.5 0.4954 0.3 0.3000
The first layer presents 9 inputs bring in to the network, 0.3 0.3063 0.3 0.2961 0.3 0.3000
second layer namely hidden layer shows neurons in process. 0.5 0.4140 0.3 0.2976 0.3 0.3001
Connecting links between first - second layer and second- 0.3 0.2648 0.5 0.4275 0.3 0.3000
third layer are adaptable synaptic weights and last layer 0.3 0.2820 0.3 0.3104 0.3 0.3001
presents output. Networks trained for varying number of 0.3 0.3018 0.3 0.2987 0.3 0.3001
iterations until the minimum value of MSE at maximum 0.3 0.3195 0.3 0.2974 0.5 0.4999
regression for training, testing and validation reached. 0.3 0.3109 0.3 0.3034 0.3 0.3000
0.3 0.3091 0.3 0.3005 0.50 0.4850
NETWORK ATTRIBUTES 0.3 0.3145 0.5 0.4999 0.50 0.4999
0.5 0.4596 0.5 0.4489 0.30 0.3004
As discussed in previous articles back-propagation neural 0.5 0.4999 0.5 0.5000 0.30 0.3000
network (BPNN) employed for all kind of operations, in
which training carried out through the minimization of the The predicted value of soil class in the form of 3-dimensional
defined error function using the gradient descent approach array shown in Table 5 includes some of the validation
[12]. It is advisable to use differentiable activation function results from all three sites. The exact procedure of decoding
because the weight update is dependent variable and relies on is comparison of predicted array with similar standard array
the gradient of error [13]. and fall of soil group in same array. as an example for any
Yeetendra Kumar, K. Venkatesh & Vijay kumar
output array 0.027, 0.893, & 0.240, the maximum value is set with desired computer configuration such that multi-
at two that is 0.893 and since this output matches with 3- dimensional system may be increased from 6 to 10 outputs.
dimensional output pattern of inorganic clay with low
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