Optimal Disc Cutters Plane Layout Design of the Full-Face Rock Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) Using an Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

Cutter head is one of the most important components for the full-face rock tunnel boring machine (TBM), in which the layout design of the disc cutters is a key issue. Considering the complex engineering technical requirements, this paper studied an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm to solve the disc cutters plane layout problem. The searching space of the design variables (disc cutters' position) were dispersed by setting several different search steps, then an ACO algorithm was adopted to search the best searching step of each design variable dynamically during the whole optimization process. Finally, the disc cutters layout design instance was solved by the ACO method to demonstrate its feasibility and effectiveness. The computational results showed that that ACO method can provide various disc cutters layout schemes for engineers choosing from.