Application of Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System For Prediction of Internal Stability of So

European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering
ISSN: 1964-8189 (Print) 2116-7214 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tece20
Application of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference

system for prediction of internal stability of soils
Xinhua Xue & Ming Xiao
To cite this article: Xinhua Xue & Ming Xiao (2016): Application of adaptive neuro-fuzzy
inference system for prediction of internal stability of soils, European Journal of Environmental
and Civil Engineering, DOI: 10.1080/19648189.2016.1271363
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19648189.2016.1271363
Published online: 26 Dec 2016.
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Download by: [The UC San Diego Library] Date: 28 December 2016, At: 00:00
European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19648189.2016.1271363
Application of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system for prediction

of internal stability of soils
Xinhua Xuea* and Ming Xiaob
a
State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, College of Water Resource
and Hydropower, Sichuan University, Chengdu, P.R. China; bDepartment of Civil &
Environmental Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
(Received 26 June 2016; accepted 21 November 2016)
This paper presents an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for the
assessment of internal stability of soils under seepage. The training of fuzzy system
was performed by a hybrid method of back-propagation (BP) and least mean square
algorithm, and the subtractive clustering algorithm was utilised for optimising the
number of fuzzy rules. Experimental data on internal stability of soils in the literature
were used to validate and evaluate the performance of the proposed ANFIS model.
Further, predictions from three models (the BP model, the particle swarm optimisa-
tion-BP model and the ANFIS model) were compared with the experimental data.
The results show that the ANFIS model is a feasible, efcient and accurate tool for
predicting the internal stability of soils according to Wan and Fells criterion.
Keywords: internal stability; adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system; particle swarm
optimisation; back propagation; subtractive clustering algorithm
1. Introduction
Seepage-induced internal erosion of soils is widely observed in dams, levees and other
earthen embankments. Internal erosion occurs when soil particles within an earthen
embankment or its foundation are carried downstream by seepage. It starts when the
erosive forces imposed by the hydraulic loads exceed the resistance of the materials in
the embankment to erosion. Internal erosion customarily includes suffusion and
piping phenomena. Suffusion is the entrainment of ne soil grains and their possible
subsequent deposition in the pores that are formed by coarse grains; suffusion may be
caused by discontinuity or segregation of soil particles and it can form large local
cavities. In piping, soil particles inside the soil matrix are entrained and washed out of
the matrix by concentrated seepage, forming a tubular pipe that progresses from
downstream to upstream; the pipe can develop into a large tunnel that may collapse.
Suffusion and piping may result in the increase of porosity and compressibility, settle-
ment, variation of permeability and the potential for a reduction in soil strength (Xiao &
Shwiyhat, 2012). Internal erosion can occur within an earthen embankment or its
foundation, along conduits and their outlet works, spillway walls or concrete gravity
structure supporting the embankment. In a survey of 11,192 dams, Foster, Fell, and
Spannagle (2000) concluded that approximately 46% of the dam failures among
the entire survey sample could be attributed to internal erosion. Internal erosion in
*Corresponding author. Email: xuexinhua@scu.edu.cn
2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

2 X. Xue and M. Xiao
embankment dams is one of the main causes of failures and accidents of dams, and the
development of internal erosion can pose a serious threat to the stability of these water
retaining structures (Bonelli, 2013).
The threat of internal erosion to earthen dams and levees has long been recognised
and its mechanisms and behaviors have been studied in the past century. The rst engi-
neers who analysed this problem were probably Bligh (1910) and Lane (1935), who
dened the soils susceptibility to erosion using a percolation factor that took into
account of soil type, seepage path and hydraulic head difference. Recently, Foster et al.
(2000) evaluated the probability of failure of dams by internal erosion and dened a
four-stage process consisting of initiation of erosion, continuation of erosion, progres-
sion to form a pipe or occasionally cause surface instability and initiation of a breach.
Fell, Wan, Cyganiewicz, and Foster (2003) presented a new approach to estimate the
time of internal erosion development in embankment dams.
Many factors affect the internal stability of a soil, such as geometric conditions (i.e.
grain sizes and their distribution, pore sizes and their distribution, and pore constriction
sizes), hydraulic conditions (i.e. hydraulic gradient or ow velocity, and ow direction)
and mechanical conditions (i.e. compaction and soil strength) (Chang & Zhang, 2013).
These factors inherently exhibit the characteristics of randomness (i.e. they follow cer-
tain probabilistic distributions), fuzziness (i.e. they are difcult to determine) and spatial
variability. Furthermore, denitive consideration of all the pertinent parameters is not
presently possible because some factors are not yet clearly understood or their effects
on soils stability are difcult to quantify. With such limitations, internal erosion predic-
tion calls for new and innovative methods such as the back-propagation (BP) neural net-
works, neuro-fuzzy networks that are able to account for randomness, fuzziness and
variability. However, the standard BP neural network model exhibits slow convergence,
local minima and lack of robustness. An efcient training algorithm, such as the particle
swarm optimisation (PSO) developed by Kennedy and Eberhart (1995), may provide
better optimisation for BP neural network model. In addition to the BP neural networks,
neuro-fuzzy networks, which combine both advantages of the fuzzy systems (e.g.
humanlike if-then rules) and the learning and optimisation abilities of the articial neu-
ral networks (ANNs), may be one of the most competent articial intelligence subsys-
tems to predict the internal erosion potential. Moreover, the network model obtained
this way would not remain a black box, since this model would have fuzzy logic capa-
bilities to interpret in terms of linguistic variables. A linguistic variable is a variable
whose values are words in a natural language, and it plays a key role in its applications,
especially in the fuzzy expert system. The main idea behind the neuro-fuzzy systems is
that they learn adaptively from experience and extract various discriminants, each appro-
priate for its purpose. Neuro-fuzzy networks have been used successfully in geotechni-
cal engineering such as the evaluation of slope failure potential (Ni, Lu, & Juang,
1996), mapping of cone penetration test (CPT) values into soil dynamics properties
(Romo & Garca, 2003), settlement prediction of shallow foundations on granular soil
(Shahin, Maier, & Jaksa, 2003) and prediction of the pullout capacity of marquee
ground anchors (Shahin & Jaksa, 2005).
In this study, the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is developed for
the assessment of internal stability of soils. The training of fuzzy system was performed
by a hybrid method of back-propagation (BP) and the least mean square (LMS) algo-
rithm, and the subtractive clustering algorithm (SCA) was utilised for optimising the
number of fuzzy rules. In addition, we also compared the prediction performances of
ANFIS, PSO-based BP neural network and a standard Levenberg Marquardt (L-M)
European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering 3
algorithm-based BP neural network. The performances of these techniques were

evaluated in terms of training performance and classication accuracies using experi-
mental data in the literature. The results conrmed that the proposed ANFIS model has
potential in accurately forecasting the internal stability of soils.
Past research has developed various criteria for the evaluation of internal stability of
soils that are mainly based on the grain size distribution; these criteria have proven
effective for evaluating susceptibility of piping or suffusion in levees and dams (e.g. Li
& Fannin, 2008; Marot, Rochim, Nguyen, Bendahmane, & Sibille, 2014; Fell & Fry,
2013; Garner & Fannin, 2010). It is noted that the objective of this paper is to use the
neuro-fuzzy network to assess the internal erosion potential based on existing criterion.
Different internal erosion criteria were not investigated or compared in this study.
2. Model development
2.1. Theory of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS)
2.1.1. Fuzzy logic
The modelling of many systems involves the consideration of some uncertain variables.
Besides the statistical uncertainties that handle variables through probability theory,
there also exists non-statistical uncertainty that handles variables in a rational framework
of fuzzy set theory (Chern, Lee, & Wang, 2008). According to Hisdal (1994), the great
achievements of fuzzy set theory are as follows: (1) the introduction of linguistic values
of variables, and (2) the introduction of the possibility of a partial grade of a member-
ship value of an object in a class instead of having a choice solely between the member-
ship values of 0 and 1 (in crisp sets).
In a classical set, the set has a crisp boundary, and the membership value of an
object in a class is only 0 or 1. The membership or non-membership of an element x in
the crisp set A is represented by the characteristic function of A, dened by

1 if x 2 A
lA x (1)
0 if x 62 A
Mathematically, the fuzzy set A is
A f x; lA xjx 2 U g (2)
where U refers to the universe of discourse dened for a specic problem and lA x is
the membership degree of the variable x that is dened as
lA x ! 0; 1 (3)
Figure 1 shows the basic framework of a fuzzy set that contains several functions:
fuzzication, fuzzy rule base, decision-making unit and defuzzication. In addition to
establishing a fuzzy rule base through linguistic fuzzy rules that are transformed from
expert knowledge and experience, a fuzzy rule base can also be established through
special algorithmic rules that obtain inputs and outputs with mathematical calculation. This
study adopted the SCA to analyse the hidden rules and to establish a fuzzy rule base.
2.1.2. ANFIS structure

In this study, a TakagiSugenoKang type fuzzy model (Takagi & Sugeno, 1985) is
used. This model includes two main components: the antecedent and the consequent
Figure 1. Basic framework for fuzzy system (Jang, 1993).
Figure 2. Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system.
parts. For simplicity, the ANFIS structure is set to have two inputs x and y as shown in
Figure 2 and explained as follows.
This fuzzy model has rules in the following forms:
Rule 1: If x is A1 and y is B1, then f1 = p1x + q1x + r1.

Rule 2: If x is A2 and y is B2, then f2 = p2x + q2x + r2.
where A1, A2, B1 and B2 are the membership functions for inputs x and y, respectively;
p1, q1, r1, p2, q2 and r2 are the parameters of the output function. The functioning of
each layer is described as follows (Jang, 1993):
Layer 1: Each node i in this layer generates membership grades of an input variable.
For instance, the node function of the ith node might be
1
O1;i lAi x 2 bi (4)
1 xci
ai
where x is the input to node i, and Ai is the linguistic label associated with this node,
and fai ; bi ; ci g is the parameter set that changes the shapes of the membership function.
Parameters in this layer are referred to as the premise parameters.
Layer 2: Each node in this layer calculates the ring strength of each rule via mul-
tiplication:
O2;i wi lAi x lBi y i 1; 2 (5)
Layer 3: The ith node of this layer, labelled as N, computes the normalised ring
strength as
wi
i
O3;i w i 1; 2 (6)
w1 w2
Layer 4: Node i in this layer computes the contribution of the ith rule towards the
model output, with the following node functions:
i fi w
O4;i w i pi x qi y r i (7)
Layer 5: The single node in this layer computes the overall output of the ANFIS as
X P
i fi
w
O5;i i fi Pi
w (8)
i wi
2.1.3. Subtractive clustering algorithm

One of the important tasks to design a fuzzy system is to determine the number of rules.
There are two approaches to generate initial fuzzy rules: manually and automatically.
The manual approach forces designers to spend much time on tuning fuzzy rules. In
many cases, the experts knowledge is fault and may contain uncertainty, so that the
manual approach is difcult to generate suitable rules. Subtractive clustering is a method
that can be used to dene membership functions and to automatically generate rules.
The SCA is based on a measure of the density of data points in which a data point with
many neighbouring points has the potential to be the cluster centre.
Consider a collection of n data points fx1 ; x2 ; . . .; xn g in an M dimensional space.
Each data point is a candidate for cluster centres, a density measure at data point xi is
dened as
" #
Xn xi xj 2
Di exp 2 (9)
ra
j1 2
where kk denotes the Euclidean distance, and ra is a positive constant representing a
neighbourhood radius. The potential of a data point to be a cluster centre is when it has
a high density value, which means that more data points are closer to it.
Let xc1 be the rst cluster centre and Dc1 is the potential value. The potential value
for each data point is dened as:
" #
kxi xc1 k2
Di Di Dc1 exp 2 (10)
r b
2
where rb is a positive constant that denes a neighbourhood that has measurable reduc-
tions in density. The constant rb is normally larger than ra to prevent closely spaced
cluster centres; generally rb is equal to 1.5 ra. After the density for each data point is
recalculated, the next cluster center xc2 is selected and all of the densities for data points
are recalculated again. This process is repeated until
Dck \eDc1 (11)

where Dck is the potential value of the kth cluster centre; is a small fraction and is an
important factor that will affect the result. Chiu (1994) suggested e 0:15.
2.1.4. Performance evaluation

Performance measures are used to indicate how well a method performs its task. The
root mean square error (RMSE) measures between the desired target output and the
actual current output from an estimated model. In the ANFIS context, if the RMSE
measure is not satisfactory, the adjustment of membership functions and the rule rene-
ment procedure is activated towards better optimisation of the model. Therefore, the
RMSE is used to evaluate the performance of ANFIS in this study, as shown in the fol-
lowing equation (Roshani, Feghhi, & Setayeshi, 2015; Eftekhari Zadeh, Feghhi,
Roshani, & Rezaei, 2016):
s
Pn
i1 yi ^ yi 2
RMSE (12)
n
where yi is the actual value and ^yi is the predicted value, and n is the number of
predictions.
2.2. Particle swarm optimisation

PSO algorithm, developed by Kennedy and Eberhart (1995), is a population-based
heuristic search technique inspired by social behaviour of bird ocking and sh school-
ing. PSO is one of a wide category of swarm intelligence-based methods used for solv-
ing global optimisation problems (Banerjee & Das, 2012; Ghosh et al., 2012; Nasir
et al., 2012). PSO starts with the random initialisation of a population of individuals
(particles) in the search space. The performance of a particle is determined by its tness
that is assessed by calculating the objective function of the problem to be solved.
Suppose that the search space is d-dimensional, then the ith particle of the swarm
can be represented as Xi xi;1 ; xi;2 ; . . .; xi;d and
V i vi;1 ; vi;2 ; . . .; vi;d , respectively.
The ith particle has its own best position Pi pi;1 ; pi;2 ; . . .; pi;d , corresponding to the
individual best objective value obtained so far at time t. The global best particle is
denoted as g, which represents the best position found so far at time t in the whole
swarm. The new velocity of each particle is given as follows

vi;j t 1 jvi;j t c1 r1 pi;j xi;j t c2 r2 gj xi;j t ; j 1; 2; . . .; d (13)
where c1 and c2 are the acceleration coefcients, usually c1 = c2 = 2; r1 and r2 are two
independent random numbers uniformly distributed in the range [0,1]; is called the
inertia weight factor.
The position of each particle is then updated in each generation according to the
following equation:
xi;j t 1 xi;j t vi;j t 1; j 1; 2; . . .; d (14)
In PSO, Equation (13) is applied to calculate the new velocity according to its previous
velocity and to the distance of its current position from both its own best historical
position and its neighbours best position. Generally, the value of each component in Vi
can be constrained to the rangevmin ; vmax to control the excessive roaming of particles out-
side the search space. Then, the particle ies towards a new position according to Equation
(14). This process is repeated until the maximum number of generations is reached.
2.3. BP neural network optimised by PSO (PSO-BP)

In articial neural networks, BP neural network is one of the powerful tools for predic-
tion of nonlinearities. It mainly consists of three layers: input layer, hidden layer and
output layer. The neighbouring layers are fully interconnected by weights, as shown in
Figure 3. That is, each neuron in the input layer is connected to all of the neurons in
the rst hidden layer. Each of the neurons in the rst hidden layer is connected to each
output neuron. Further, each of the neurons in the input layer is connected to each
output neuron.
Although the BP neural network was found to be more efcient compared to statisti-
cal methods; however, it has several inherent drawbacks such as over tting, slow con-
vergence, poor generalising performance and arriving at local minimum. Therefore, the
PSO algorithm was employed to optimise the BP neural network model in this study.
The main procedure of the PSO-BP method is described as follows:
Step 1: Normalise the sample data groups according to Equation (15), and then
dene the topological structure of the BP network according to the samples.
x xmin
y (15)
xmax xmin
Figure 3. BP neural network architecture.

in which y is a normalised input parameter, x is the original input parameter, xmax and
xmin are the maximum and minimum parameters, respectively.
Step 2: Initialise the parameters of PSO, such as each particles velocity and
position, the acceleration coefcients c1 and c2, the inertia weight factor .
Step 3: Update each particles velocity and position according to Equations (13) and
(14), respectively.
Step 4: Evaluate each particles tness. In this study, the RMSE (as shown in
Equation (12)) of BP neural network is used as the tness function to guide the particle
population to search for the optimum solution.
Step 5: Update the personal best position pbest and the global best position gbest.
Step 6: Choose the maximum of the pbest as the current gbest of the particle.
Step 7: If the maximum of the iteration is achieved or the optimum solution is
acquired, then the algorithm is stopped, else return to Step 3.
The ow chart of the PSO-BP algorithm is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Flow chart of the PSO-BP algorithm.

3. Case study
In this study, the following six factors including the clay content (<0.005 mm), nes
content (<0.075 mm), sand fraction (0.0754.75 mm), gravel fraction (>4.75 mm), coef-
cient of uniformity Cu and coefcient of curvature Cc were taken into account as the
input parameters of the models of ANFIS, BP and PSO-BP. The database used in this
study was selected from Wan and Fell (2004). A few of the original records are omitted
because of incomplete data. The database includes 62 internal stability tests. The rst
50 of the total data were used to train the ANFIS model, whereas the remaining 12 of
the data were used to verify the accuracy and the effectiveness of the trained ANFIS
model for prediction of internal stability of soils. In this study, 1 represents stable and
0 denotes unstable, known as the nal classiers. In the determination of the nal
classier, the soils internal stability criterion was implicitly dened in the experimental
conditions and observations in the training data-sets. The detailed training and testing
datasets are summarised in Table 1.
Table 1 lists the inuencing factors in terms of grain size distribution. It should be
noted that other work has shown that the dry density, water content, liquid limit and satu-
ration ratio all play a role in the internal erosion potential or resistance (e.g. Regazzoni &
Marot, 2011). In this study, model predictions and comparisons were based on the internal
stability criteria by Wan and Fell (2004), which are based on particle gradations.
The ANFIS model structure consists of 6 inputs, 14 input membership functions
(MFs), 14 output membership functions (MFs) and 1 output, as shown in Figure 5. Dif-
ferent parameter types and their values used for training ANFIS are shown in Table 2.
The RMSE convergence curve of ANFIS was derived as shown in Figure 6. From the
curve, the nal convergence value is 1.1 102. In addition, the nal Gaussian-shaped
MFs of the input parameters after training are shown in Figures 712, respectively.
Notice that all the inputs and outputs in Figures 712 have exactly 14 membership
functions. The 14 membership functions represent the 14 clusters that were identied by sub-
cluster. By default, the rst membership function (the red curve as shown in Figures 712)
would be selected in the membership function editor. For example, the parameters of the rst
membership function named in1cluster1 (the red curve as shown in Figure 7) are
2:292 0:005948, where 2.292 represents the spread coefcient of the Gaussian curve
and 0.005948 represents the centre of the Gaussian curve. In1cluster1 captures the position
and inuence of the rst cluster for the input variable clay content. Similarly, the position and
inuence of other clusters for the input variables are captured by the other membership func-
tions. The parameters of the rst membership functions in Figures 812 are 4:688 0:826,
9:062 29:9, 8:876 69:18, 84:51 13:2, 6:966 1:343, respectively.
In addition, there are 14 rules generated based on ANFIS modelling and they are
listed as follows:
(1) If clay content is in1cluster1, and nes content is in2cluster1, and sand fraction
is in3cluster1, and gravel fraction is in4cluster1, and Cu is in5cluster1, and Cc
is in6cluster1, then out1 is out1cluster1 (1);
10
Table 1. Data-set used in model training and predictions in case study (1: stable; 0: unstable) (data from Wan and Fell (2004)).
Clay content Fines content Sand fraction (0.075 Gravel fraction Coeff. of Coeff. of Internal
Datasets No. (<0.005 mm) (%) (<0.075 mm) (%) 4.75 mm) (%) (>4.75 mm) (%) uniformity (Cu) curvature (Cc) stability
1 0.0 0.0 60.0 40.0 3.1 0.80 1
2 0.0 0.0 100.0 0.0 3.1 0.80 1
3 0.0 0.0 64.1 35.9 6.2 0.69 1
4 0.0 0.0 36.2 63.8 6.4 0.69 1
5 0.0 0.0 44.3 55.7 14.1 0.59 1
6 0.0 0.0 51.8 48.2 13.8 0.59 1
X. Xue and M. Xiao
7 0.0 0.0 58.6 41.4 13.4 0.59 1

8 0.0 0.0 70.0 30.0 11.7 0.61 1
9 0.0 0.0 56.3 43.7 3.9 1.02 1
10 0.0 0.0 30.8 69.2 3.1 0.93 1
11 0.0 0.0 16.3 83.7 5.4 1.35 1
12 0.0 0.0 88.5 11.5 1.2 0.97 1
13 0.0 0.0 90.4 9.6 1.1 0.98 0
14 0.0 00 91.1 8.9 1.2 0.97 0
15 0.0 0.9 29.9 69.2 13.2 1.32 1
16 0.0 0.6 30.4 69.0 17.1 1.01 1
17 0.0 0.3 26.7 73.0 17.0 2.44 1
Training 18 0.0 0.0 42.6 57.4 7.7 0.92 1
19 0.0 0.0 71.5 28.5 3.6 0.94 1
20 0.0 0.0 25.7 74.3 3.4 0.97 1
21 0.0 0.0 80.6 19.4 4.3 1.67 1
22 0.0 0.0 16.6 83.4 3.5 1.49 1
23 0.0 0.0 42.2 57.8 26.0 0.53 0
24 0.0 0.0 36.1 63.9 16.8 1.33 0
25 0.0 0.0 30.3 69.7 21.8 5.85 0
26 0.0 1.3 14.5 84.2 28.8 4.57 0
27 0.0 0.0 28.0 72.0 68.0 1.71 0
28 0.0 0.0 23.0 77.0 43.1 1.60 0
29 0.0 0.0 80.9 19.1 7.0 0.78 1
30 0.0 0.0 62.0 38.0 19.3 0.31 0
31 0.0 0.0 43.5 56.5 18.8 4.08 0
32 5.9 42.3 57.7 0.0 9.2 4.8 1
33 14.6 29.2 70.8 0.0 84.7 29.05 1
34 21.7 43.9 56.1 0.0 297.2 0.6 1
35 7.3 16.2 83.8 0.0 48.9 10.61 1
36 14.7 29.2 70.8 0.0 189.4 30.95 1
37 18.3 35.5 63.5 0.0 493.2 0.41 1
38 7.0 14.3 85.7 0.0 16.9 13.22 0
39 14.2 28.9 71.1 0.0 126.9 66.35 0
40 14.2 28.9 71.1 0.0 111.5 49.72 0
41 3.5 8.7 91.3 0.0 5.5 1.62 0
42 7.0 14.3 85.7 0.0 44.2 13.51 0
43 3.5 7.3 92.7 0.0 2.9 1.04 0
44 10.7 21.6 78.3 0.1 97.2 25.57 0
45 11.9 24.6 75.1 0.4 388.0 9.71 0
46 15.4 31.7 68.0 0.3 797.9 0.59 0
47 15.4 31.5 68.5 0.0 404.4 1.31 0
48 0.6 3.3 26.2 70.5 11.8 1.01 1
49 0.0 5.9 31.9 62.2 24.1 1.65 1
50 4.2 9.4 35.1 55.4 93.9 6.33 1
51 0.4 9.8 39.6 50.6 101.4 5.16 1
52 1.8 6.4 6.5 87.2 59.4 21.09 0
53 0.0 0.2 5.6 94.2 2.9 1.29 0
54 0.0 5.7 9.0 85.3 82.1 19.35 0
Testing 55 0.0 5.2 11.6 83.2 103.3 14.54 0
56 0.0 0.0 73.6 26.4 6.3 2.49 1
57 0.0 0.0 67.3 32.7 4.1 1.84 1
58 0.0 1.0 72.2 26.8 22.9 8.91 0
59 0.0 0.8 72.2 27.0 8.7 3.39 0
60 0.0 1.1 58.0 40.8 28.8 0.76 1
61 0.0 0.7 73.5 25.8 17.0 0.58 1
62 0.0 1.6 32.9 65.5 31.6 2.55 0
European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering
11
Figure 5. ANFIS model structure.
Table 2. Different parameter types and their values used for training ANFIS.
ANFIS parameter type ANFIS (SCA)
Number of fuzzy rules 14
Number of nodes 205
Number of linear parameters 98
Number of nonlinear parameters 168
Total number of parameters 266
Number of training data sets 50
Number of verication data sets 12
Table 3. Comparison between the experimental results and model predictions.

Experimental PSO-
No. results ANFIS BP BP
51 1 0.995 0.676 0.825
52 0 0.011 1.001 0.089
53 0 0.025 0.924 0.067
54 0 0.022 0.034 0.02
55 0 0.015 0.084 0.021
56 1 1.001 0.947 1.005
57 1 0.993 1.005 0.968
58 0 0.027 0.091 0.054
59 0 0.038 0.06 0.046
60 1 1.06 0.814 0.927
61 1 1.024 0.845 0.994
62 0 0.035 0.091 0.078
Figure 6. RMSE versus epochs.
Figure 7. Membership functions of the clay content.
Figure 8. Membership functions of the nes content.

Figure 9. Membership functions of the sand fraction.
Figure 10. Membership functions of the gravel fraction.
Figure 11. Membership functions of the Cu.
Figure 12. Membership functions of the Cc.
(10) If clay content is in1cluster10, and nes content is in2cluster10, and sand frac-
tion is in3cluster10, and gravel fraction is in4cluster10, and Cu is in5cluster10,
and Cc is in6cluster10, then out1 is out1cluster10 (1);
and Cc is in6cluster11,then out1 is out1cluster11 (1);
and Cc is in6cluster14, then out1 is out1cluster14 (1).
The rst rule can be simply explained as follows. If the inputs to the ANFIS, clay
content, nes content, sand fraction, gravel fraction, Cu, and Cc strongly belong to their
respective cluster membership functions (cluster1), then the output (out1) or the status
of stability must strongly belong to its cluster1 membership function. The (1) at the
end of each rule indicates that the rule has a weight or an importance of 1. Weights
can take any value between 0 and 1. Rules with less weights count less in the nal
output.
The developed fuzzy model can provide a precise evaluation of soils internal erosion
potential based on Wan and Fells criterion (2004) once we enter proper input data.
Figure 13 shows a model application in MATLAB environment. When input parameters
are clay content = 9.46%, nes content = 24.1%, sand fraction = 42.7%, gravel
fraction = 33.2%, Cu = 213 and Cc = 53, the status of stability (Out 1) would be 0.085
(Figure 13), which means the status of stability is unstable. Since the model has the
ability of interpolating input parameters, that is, if we take any value between the mini-
mum and the maximum of the data-set, the proposed ANFIS model is capable of pre-
dicting the internal stability of soils under seepage according to Wan and Fells
criterion.
To evaluate the performance of the proposed ANFIS method, a comparison between
the experimental results and the predictions by the PSO-BP model, the BP model and
the ANFIS model are made and shown in Figure 14 and Tables 34, respectively. It
should be noted that it is very important to select the number of hidden layers and the
number of neurons in various layers before using the BP neural network. The number
of neurons in input and output layers is usually dictated by the nature of the problem.
In this study, there are six parameters including the clay content (<0.005 mm), nes
content (<0.075 mm), sand fraction (0.0754.75 mm), gravel fraction (>4.75 mm), coef-
cient of uniformity Cu, and coefcient of curvature Cc were taken into account as the
input parameters; therefore, the number of neurons in input layers is 6. As mentioned,
Figure 13. Graphical illustration of fuzzy model application.

Figure 14. Comparison between the forecasted and experimental results.
Table 4. Performance comparison among different models.

Accuracy rate (%) RMSE
Models Training Testing Total Training Testing Total
ANFIS 100 100 100 0.011 0.027 0.038
BP 100 83 96.77 0.073 0.413 0.486
PSO-BP 100 100 100 0.033 0.072 0.105
the main objective of this paper is to predict the potential of internal stability of soils
under seepage, so the number of neurons in output layer is 1 and one hidden layer BP
neural network is adopted herein. For the number of neurons in hidden layer, the main
strategy is to use as few hidden layer neurons as possible because each unit adds to the
loads on the CPU during simulations. If the network fails to converge to a solution, it
means that more hidden neurons are required. If it does converge we might try for fewer
hidden neurons. Based on this idea, the number of hidden neurons was determined by
trial and found suitable network with ve neurons in hidden layer. Thus, the structure
of BP neural network is designed as 6-5-1. Many kinds of transfer functions have been
proposed in the literature and one of the most popular hidden layer transfer functions is
the tangent sigmoid function; therefore, the tangent sigmoid transfer function is
employed in the hidden layer herein. Because the pureline transfer function is sufcient
for BP neural network to approximate almost any complex function; therefore, it is
employed in the output layer in this study. In addition, the important parameters of PSO
used in this study are given in Table 5. In this case, it is assumed that the acceleration
coefcients c1 = c2 = 2 and inertia weight j0:5.
As shown in Table 4, the performance of ANFIS model is superior to those of BP
and PSO-BP models. For example, the total accuracy rates of ANFIS, BP and PSO-BP
models are 100, 96.77 and 100%, respectively. Whereas the total RMSE values of
ANFIS, BP and PSO-BP models are 0.038, 0.486 and 0.105, respectively. Clearly, the
smaller the RMSE values, the better the prediction accuracy and vice versa. However,
different from the PSO-BP model, the ANFIS model has the fuzzy logic capabilities to
interpret in terms of linguistic variables, while this capability lacks in the PSO-BP
model. These results indicate that the ANFIS is a valid tool to predict the internal stabil-
ity of soils under seepage according to Wan and Fells criterion (2004).
Table 5. Parameters used in the PSO model.

Parameters Value
Acceleration constants (c1, c2) (2, 2)
Population size 30
Inertia weight 0.5
Minimum error gradient 106
4. Conclusions
In this study, the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is developed for the
assessment of internal erosion potential of soils. The training of fuzzy system was per-
formed by a hybrid method of BP-LMS algorithm and the SCA was utilised for optimis-
ing the number of fuzzy rules. In addition, we compared the prediction performances of
ANFIS, PSO-BP neural network model and a standard LevenbergMarquardt algo-
rithm-based BP neural network model. The performances of these techniques have been
evaluated in terms of the training performance and classication accuracies. The results
conrmed that the proposed ANFIS model is capable of predicting the internal stability
of soils under seepage according to Wan and Fells criterion (Wan & Fell, 2004). The
following conclusions are drawn from this study.
(1) The developed fuzzy model, ANFIS, can provide a precise evaluation of internal
stability if proper input data are provided. The model has the ability of interpolating
input parameters and the predictions can be made in various conditions. ANFIS may be
one of the most competent articial intelligence subsystems to evaluate the internal ero-
sion potential and stability of soils. In addition, the developed ANFIS model could be
used to predict other criteria proposed by the literature if proper input data are provided.
It could be an interesting tool to compare several criteria.
(2) The standard BP neural network model exhibits slow convergence, local minima
and lack of robustness. As an efcient training algorithm, PSO can be a good optimisa-
tion tool for the BP neural network model.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the authors.
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European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering

ISSN: 1964-8189 (Print) 2116-7214 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tece20

Application of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference

Xinhua Xue & Ming Xiao

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19648189.2016.1271363

Published online: 26 Dec 2016.

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Application of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system for prediction

*Corresponding author. Email: xuexinhua@scu.edu.cn

2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

algorithm-based BP neural network. The performances of these techniques were

2.1.2. ANFIS structure

Figure 1. Basic framework for fuzzy system (Jang, 1993).

Figure 2. Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system.

Rule 1: If x is A1 and y is B1, then f1 = p1x + q1x + r1.

O2;i wi lAi x lBi y i 1; 2 (5)

2.1.3. Subtractive clustering algorithm

Dck \eDc1 (11)

2.1.4. Performance evaluation

2.2. Particle swarm optimisation

2.3. BP neural network optimised by PSO (PSO-BP)

Figure 3. BP neural network architecture.

Figure 4. Flow chart of the PSO-BP algorithm.

7 0.0 0.0 58.6 41.4 13.4 0.59 1

Figure 5. ANFIS model structure.

Table 3. Comparison between the experimental results and model predictions.

Figure 6. RMSE versus epochs.

Figure 7. Membership functions of the clay content.

Figure 8. Membership functions of the nes content.

Figure 9. Membership functions of the sand fraction.

Figure 10. Membership functions of the gravel fraction.

Figure 11. Membership functions of the Cu.

Figure 12. Membership functions of the Cc.

Figure 13. Graphical illustration of fuzzy model application.

Figure 14. Comparison between the forecasted and experimental results.

Table 4. Performance comparison among different models.

Table 5. Parameters used in the PSO model.

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