Application of Soft Computing Techniques in Civil Engineering

The field of engineering is a creative one. The problems encountered in this field are generally unstructured and imprecise and tackled by intuitions and past experiences of a designer. The conventional methods of computing, relying on analytical or empiricalrelations, become time consuming when dealing with real-life problems. To study, model and analyse such problems, approximate computer-based soft computing techniques, inspired by the reasoning, intuition, logic and wisdom possessed by human beings, areemployed. This book is an attempt to put together knowledge and experience of soft computing techniques in civil engineering. The principal concern of the book is to show how soft computing techniques can be applied to solve problems in research and practice. An attempt has been made to present various civil engineering research problems using soft computing techniques such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP), fuzzy logic, artificial neural network (ANN), genetic algorithm (GA) and linear programming (LP), etc. Students and research scholars need a good text or reference book which covers the different methods of soft computing used for civil engineering problems. Soft computing techniques are applied to a huge quantity of problems spread in several areas of science. In contrast to conventional computing techniques which rely on exact solutions, soft computing aims at exploiting given tolerance of imprecision, the trivial and uncertain nature of the problem to yield an approximate solution to a problem in quick time. Soft computing being a multi-disciplinary field uses a variety of statistical, probabilistic and optimization tools which complement each other to produce its three main branches viz., Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms and Fuzzy Logic. Six different soft computing techniques and their application to civil engineering problem has been discussed. The application of the analytic hierarchy method has been demonstrated through solid waste management and project indexing problem. The fuzzy rule based technique is discussed with its application to condition assessment of water mains and reservoir operation. Application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is discussed through analysing ground water quality index and in transportation engineering. Genetic algorithm and its application on water distribution network have been discussed. The cellular automata application in the civil engineering is included in this book. Lastly, application of linear programming for optimization of cropping pattern is also included.