Cutters Plane Layout Design of the Full-Face Rock Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) Based on Multi-Spiral Layout Pattern

The multi-spiral layout pattern has been widely adopted in practice during the layout design of the cutters. Considering the engineering technical requirements and the corresponding structure design requirements of the cutter head, this study formulates a nonlinear multi-objective mathematical model with multiple constraints for the cutters plane layout design based on a multi-spiral layout pattern. And then a genetic algorithm is employed to solve a cutters’ multi-spiral layout problem. An instance of the cutters’ plane layout design was solved by the proposed methods using a multi-spiral layout pattern. Experimental results showed the effectiveness of the method of combining the mathematical model with the algorithms, and the pros and cons of the multi-spiral layout pattern.