In addition to the effect that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the physical and mental health of individuals,it has also led to a change in the mental and emotional state of many employees.Especially among businesses...In addition to the effect that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the physical and mental health of individuals,it has also led to a change in the mental and emotional state of many employees.Especially among businesses and private companies,which faced many restrictions due to the special conditions of the pandemic.Therefore,the present study aimed to design an artificial neural network with MLP technique to analyze the relationship between demographic variables,resilience,COVID-19 and burnout in start-ups in Iran.The research method was quantitative.Managers and employees of start-ups formed the statistical population of the study,based on the statistical sample size of the unlimited community,384 of them were tested.For data gathering,standard questionnaires include of MBI-GS and BRCS and researcher-made questionnaire of stress caused by COVID-19 were used.The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by a panel of experts and their reliability was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient.The number of neurons in the input layer was equal to 10,the number of neurons in the 1st hidden layer was equal to 7,the number of neurons in the output layer was equal to 1,and the number of epochs was equal to 500.70%of the data were used for training and 30%for testing.In the designed artificial neural network,all experiment data except one were correctly predicted and the obtained MAE error was less than 0.012%.Finally,he precision and correction of the presented model was confirmed by the obtained results.展开更多
Knowledge of pore-water pressure(PWP)variation is fundamental for slope stability.A precise prediction of PWP is difficult due to complex physical mechanisms and in situ natural variability.To explore the applicabilit...Knowledge of pore-water pressure(PWP)variation is fundamental for slope stability.A precise prediction of PWP is difficult due to complex physical mechanisms and in situ natural variability.To explore the applicability and advantages of recurrent neural networks(RNNs)on PWP prediction,three variants of RNNs,i.e.,standard RNN,long short-term memory(LSTM)and gated recurrent unit(GRU)are adopted and compared with a traditional static artificial neural network(ANN),i.e.,multi-layer perceptron(MLP).Measurements of rainfall and PWP of representative piezometers from a fully instrumented natural slope in Hong Kong are used to establish the prediction models.The coefficient of determination(R^2)and root mean square error(RMSE)are used for model evaluations.The influence of input time series length on the model performance is investigated.The results reveal that MLP can provide acceptable performance but is not robust.The uncertainty bounds of RMSE of the MLP model range from 0.24 kPa to 1.12 k Pa for the selected two piezometers.The standard RNN can perform better but the robustness is slightly affected when there are significant time lags between PWP changes and rainfall.The GRU and LSTM models can provide more precise and robust predictions than the standard RNN.The effects of the hidden layer structure and the dropout technique are investigated.The single-layer GRU is accurate enough for PWP prediction,whereas a double-layer GRU brings extra time cost with little accuracy improvement.The dropout technique is essential to overfitting prevention and improvement of accuracy.展开更多
This paper presents the development of an artificial neural network (ANN) model based on the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) for analyzing internet traffic data over IP networks. We applied the ANN to analyze a time seri...This paper presents the development of an artificial neural network (ANN) model based on the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) for analyzing internet traffic data over IP networks. We applied the ANN to analyze a time series of measured data for network response evaluation. For this reason, we used the input and output data of an internet traffic over IP networks to identify the ANN model, and we studied the performance of some training algorithms used to estimate the weights of the neuron. The comparison between some training algorithms demonstrates the efficiency and the accu-racy of the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) and the Resilient back propagation (Rp) algorithms in term of statistical crite-ria. Consequently, the obtained results show that the developed models, using the LM and the Rp algorithms, can successfully be used for analyzing internet traffic over IP networks, and can be applied as an excellent and fundamental tool for the management of the internet traffic at different times.展开更多
Simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) belongs to the class of gradient-free optimization methods that extract gradient information from successive objective function evaluation. This paper descri...Simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) belongs to the class of gradient-free optimization methods that extract gradient information from successive objective function evaluation. This paper describes an improved SPSA algorithm, which entails fuzzy adaptive gain sequences, gradient smoothing, and a step rejection procedure to enhance convergence and stability. The proposed fuzzy adaptive simultaneous perturbation approximation (FASPA) algorithm is particularly well suited to problems involving a large number of parameters such as those encountered in nonlinear system identification using neural networks (NNs). Accordingly, a multilayer perceptron (MLP) network with popular training algorithms was used to predicate the system response. We found that an MLP trained by FASPSA had the desired accuracy that was comparable to results obtained by traditional system identification algorithms. Simulation results for typical nonlinear systems demonstrate that the proposed NN architecture trained with FASPSA yields improved system identification as measured by reduced time of convergence and a smaller identification error.展开更多
One of the most important problems in robot kinematics and control is, finding the solution of Inverse Kinematics. Inverse kinematics computation has been one of the main problems in robotics research. As the Complexi...One of the most important problems in robot kinematics and control is, finding the solution of Inverse Kinematics. Inverse kinematics computation has been one of the main problems in robotics research. As the Complexity of robot increases, obtaining the inverse kinematics is difficult and computationally expensive. Traditional methods such as geometric, iterative and algebraic are inadequate if the joint structure of the manipulator is more complex. As alternative approaches, neural networks and optimal search methods have been widely used for inverse kinematics modeling and control in robotics This paper proposes neural network architecture that consists of 6 sub-neural networks to solve the inverse kinematics problem for robotics manipulators with 2 or higher degrees of freedom. The neural networks utilized are multi-layered perceptron (MLP) with a back-propagation training algorithm. This approach will reduce the complexity of the algorithm and calculation (matrix inversion) faced when using the Inverse Geometric Models implementation (IGM) in robotics. The obtained results are presented and analyzed in order to prove the efficiency of the proposed approach.展开更多
Determination of ballistic performance of an armor solution is a complicated task and evolved significantly with the application of finite element methods(FEM) in this research field.The traditional armor design studi...Determination of ballistic performance of an armor solution is a complicated task and evolved significantly with the application of finite element methods(FEM) in this research field.The traditional armor design studies performed with FEM requires sophisticated procedures and intensive computational effort,therefore simpler and accurate numerical approaches are always worthwhile to decrease armor development time.This study aims to apply a hybrid method using FEM simulation and artificial neural network(ANN) analysis to approximate ballistic limit thickness for armor steels.To achieve this objective,a predictive model based on the artificial neural networks is developed to determine ballistic resistance of high hardness armor steels against 7.62 mm armor piercing ammunition.In this methodology,the FEM simulations are used to create training cases for Multilayer Perceptron(MLP) three layer networks.In order to validate FE simulation methodology,ballistic shot tests on 20 mm thickness target were performed according to standard Stanag 4569.Afterwards,the successfully trained ANN(s) is used to predict the ballistic limit thickness of 500 HB high hardness steel armor.Results show that even with limited number of data,FEM-ANN approach can be used to predict ballistic penetration depth with adequate accuracy.展开更多
The present study was conducted to present the comparative modeling, predictive and generalization abilities of response surface methodology (RSM) and artificial neural network (ANN) for the thermal structure of stabi...The present study was conducted to present the comparative modeling, predictive and generalization abilities of response surface methodology (RSM) and artificial neural network (ANN) for the thermal structure of stabilized confined jet diffusion flames in the presence of different geometries of bluff-body burners. Two stabilizer disc burners tapered at 30° and 60° and another frustum cone of 60°/30° inclination angle were employed all having the same diameter of 80 (mm) acting as flame holders. The measured radial mean temperature profiles of the developed stabilized flames at different normalized axial distances (x/dj) were considered as the model example of the physical process. The RSM and ANN methods analyze the effect of the two operating parameters namely (r), the radial distance from the center line of the flame, and (x/dj) on the measured temperature of the flames, to find the predicted maximum temperature and the corresponding process variables. A three-layered Feed Forward Neural Network in conjugation with the hyperbolic tangent sigmoid (tansig) as transfer function and the optimized topology of 2:10:1 (input neurons: hidden neurons: output neurons) was developed. Also the ANN method has been employed to illustrate such effects in the three and two dimensions and shows the location of the predicted maximum temperature. The results indicated the superiority of ANN in the prediction capability as the ranges of R2 and F Ratio are 0.868 - 0.947 and 231.7 - 864.1 for RSM method compared to 0.964 - 0.987 and 2878.8 7580.7 for ANN method beside lower values for error analysis terms.展开更多
Background:Diabetes and hypertension are two of the commonest diseases in the world.As they unfavorably affect people of different age groups,they have become a cause of concern and must be predicted and diagnosed wel...Background:Diabetes and hypertension are two of the commonest diseases in the world.As they unfavorably affect people of different age groups,they have become a cause of concern and must be predicted and diagnosed well in advance.Objective:This research aims to determine the effectiveness of artificial neural networks(ANNs)in predicting diabetes and blood pressure diseases and to point out the factors which have a high impact on these diseases.Sample:This work used two online datasets which consist of data collected from 768 individuals.We applied neural network algorithms to predict if the individuals have those two diseases based on some factors.Diabetes prediction is based on five factors:age,weight,fat-ratio,glucose,and insulin,while blood pressure prediction is based on six factors:age,weight,fat-ratio,blood pressure,alcohol,and smoking.Method:A model based on the Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network(MLP)was implemented.The inputs of the network were the factors for each disease,while the output was the prediction of the disease’s occurrence.The model performance was compared with other classifiers such as Support Vector Machine(SVM)and K-Nearest Neighbors(KNN).We used performance metrics measures to assess the accuracy and performance of MLP.Also,a tool was implemented to help diagnose the diseases and to understand the results.Result:The model predicted the two diseases with correct classification rate(CCR)of 77.6%for diabetes and 68.7%for hypertension.The results indicate that MLP correctly predicts the probability of being diseased or not,and the performance can be significantly increased compared with both SVM and KNN.This shows MLPs effectiveness in early disease prediction.展开更多
Designing an authentication system for securing the power plants are important to allow only specific staffs of the power plant to access the certain blocks so that they can be restricted from using high risk-oriented...Designing an authentication system for securing the power plants are important to allow only specific staffs of the power plant to access the certain blocks so that they can be restricted from using high risk-oriented equipment.This authentication is also vital to prevent any security threats or risks like compromises of business server,release of confidential data etc.Though conventional works attempted to accomplish better authentication,they lacked with respect to accuracy.Hence,the study aims to enhance the recognition rate by introducing a voice recognition system as a personal authentication based on Deep Learning(DL)due to its ability to perform effective learning.The study proposes Equivalent Rectangular Bandwidth and Deep Multi-Layer Perceptron(ERB-DMLP)as it has the ability to perform efficient and relevant feature extraction and faster classification.This algorithm also has the ability to establish effective correlation between voices and images and achieve the semantic relationship between them.Voice preprocessing is initially performed to make it suitable for further processing by removing the noise and enhancing the quality of signal.This process is also vital to minimize the extra computations so that the overall efficacy of the system can be made flexible by considering the audio files as features and the images as labels to identify a person’s voice by classifying the extracted features from the ERB Feature Extraction.This is then passed as the input into DMLP model to classify the persons,and trained the model to make an accurate classification of audio with corresponding image labels,and perform the performance test based on the trained model.Flexibility,relevant feature extraction and faster classification ability of the proposed work has made it explore better outcomes that is confirmed through results.展开更多
<div style="text-align:justify;"> <span style="font-family:Verdana;">Sensitivity analysis of neural networks to input variation is an important research area as it goes some way to addr...<div style="text-align:justify;"> <span style="font-family:Verdana;">Sensitivity analysis of neural networks to input variation is an important research area as it goes some way to addressing the criticisms of their black-box behaviour. Such analysis of RBFNs for hydrological modelling has previously been limited to exploring perturbations to both inputs and connecting weights. In this paper, the backward chaining rule that has been used for sensitivity analysis of MLPs, is applied to RBFNs and it is shown how such analysis can provide insight into physical relationships. A trigonometric example is first presented to show the effectiveness and accuracy of this approach for first order derivatives alongside a comparison of the results with an equivalent MLP. The paper presents a real-world application in the modelling of river stage shows the importance of such approaches helping to justify and select such models.</span> </div>展开更多
Estimating average vertical pillar stresses is a critical step in designing room-and-pillar mines.Several analytical methods can be used to estimate the vertical stresses acting on the pillars.However,the present anal...Estimating average vertical pillar stresses is a critical step in designing room-and-pillar mines.Several analytical methods can be used to estimate the vertical stresses acting on the pillars.However,the present analytical methods fail to adequately account for the influence of abutments on the distribution of vertical stresses,especially when applied to narrow panel widths and pillar layouts comprising evenly spaced barriers.In this study,a multi-layer perceptron neural network(MLPNN)was applied to predict the vertical loads of regular pillars more accurately.Hundreds of room-and-pillar mine layouts were modeled using a displacement discontinuity method(DDM),and a database of 2355 sampled pillar cases was compiled.The MLPNN was trained based on this database,and its prediction capabilities were further validated using simulations by a finite difference code(i.e.,FLAC3D).The model predictions and the FLAC3D simulations reasonably agreed with a regression coefficient of 0.99.The model was also adapted for mine cases with evenly spaced barrier pillars,and its application to a real case study mine has shown to provide accurate pillar stress estimations;hence,this model is suitable for practical use at mines.Even though the MLPNN model cannot be applied universally to all mine situations,it seems as a significant improvement over existing analytical techniques in terms of accounting for the influence of abutments on pillar stresses.展开更多
文摘In addition to the effect that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the physical and mental health of individuals,it has also led to a change in the mental and emotional state of many employees.Especially among businesses and private companies,which faced many restrictions due to the special conditions of the pandemic.Therefore,the present study aimed to design an artificial neural network with MLP technique to analyze the relationship between demographic variables,resilience,COVID-19 and burnout in start-ups in Iran.The research method was quantitative.Managers and employees of start-ups formed the statistical population of the study,based on the statistical sample size of the unlimited community,384 of them were tested.For data gathering,standard questionnaires include of MBI-GS and BRCS and researcher-made questionnaire of stress caused by COVID-19 were used.The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by a panel of experts and their reliability was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient.The number of neurons in the input layer was equal to 10,the number of neurons in the 1st hidden layer was equal to 7,the number of neurons in the output layer was equal to 1,and the number of epochs was equal to 500.70%of the data were used for training and 30%for testing.In the designed artificial neural network,all experiment data except one were correctly predicted and the obtained MAE error was less than 0.012%.Finally,he precision and correction of the presented model was confirmed by the obtained results.
基金supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.51979158,51639008,51679135,and 51422905)the Program of Shanghai Academic Research Leader by Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality(Project No.19XD1421900)。
文摘Knowledge of pore-water pressure(PWP)variation is fundamental for slope stability.A precise prediction of PWP is difficult due to complex physical mechanisms and in situ natural variability.To explore the applicability and advantages of recurrent neural networks(RNNs)on PWP prediction,three variants of RNNs,i.e.,standard RNN,long short-term memory(LSTM)and gated recurrent unit(GRU)are adopted and compared with a traditional static artificial neural network(ANN),i.e.,multi-layer perceptron(MLP).Measurements of rainfall and PWP of representative piezometers from a fully instrumented natural slope in Hong Kong are used to establish the prediction models.The coefficient of determination(R^2)and root mean square error(RMSE)are used for model evaluations.The influence of input time series length on the model performance is investigated.The results reveal that MLP can provide acceptable performance but is not robust.The uncertainty bounds of RMSE of the MLP model range from 0.24 kPa to 1.12 k Pa for the selected two piezometers.The standard RNN can perform better but the robustness is slightly affected when there are significant time lags between PWP changes and rainfall.The GRU and LSTM models can provide more precise and robust predictions than the standard RNN.The effects of the hidden layer structure and the dropout technique are investigated.The single-layer GRU is accurate enough for PWP prediction,whereas a double-layer GRU brings extra time cost with little accuracy improvement.The dropout technique is essential to overfitting prevention and improvement of accuracy.
文摘This paper presents the development of an artificial neural network (ANN) model based on the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) for analyzing internet traffic data over IP networks. We applied the ANN to analyze a time series of measured data for network response evaluation. For this reason, we used the input and output data of an internet traffic over IP networks to identify the ANN model, and we studied the performance of some training algorithms used to estimate the weights of the neuron. The comparison between some training algorithms demonstrates the efficiency and the accu-racy of the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) and the Resilient back propagation (Rp) algorithms in term of statistical crite-ria. Consequently, the obtained results show that the developed models, using the LM and the Rp algorithms, can successfully be used for analyzing internet traffic over IP networks, and can be applied as an excellent and fundamental tool for the management of the internet traffic at different times.
文摘Simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) belongs to the class of gradient-free optimization methods that extract gradient information from successive objective function evaluation. This paper describes an improved SPSA algorithm, which entails fuzzy adaptive gain sequences, gradient smoothing, and a step rejection procedure to enhance convergence and stability. The proposed fuzzy adaptive simultaneous perturbation approximation (FASPA) algorithm is particularly well suited to problems involving a large number of parameters such as those encountered in nonlinear system identification using neural networks (NNs). Accordingly, a multilayer perceptron (MLP) network with popular training algorithms was used to predicate the system response. We found that an MLP trained by FASPSA had the desired accuracy that was comparable to results obtained by traditional system identification algorithms. Simulation results for typical nonlinear systems demonstrate that the proposed NN architecture trained with FASPSA yields improved system identification as measured by reduced time of convergence and a smaller identification error.
文摘One of the most important problems in robot kinematics and control is, finding the solution of Inverse Kinematics. Inverse kinematics computation has been one of the main problems in robotics research. As the Complexity of robot increases, obtaining the inverse kinematics is difficult and computationally expensive. Traditional methods such as geometric, iterative and algebraic are inadequate if the joint structure of the manipulator is more complex. As alternative approaches, neural networks and optimal search methods have been widely used for inverse kinematics modeling and control in robotics This paper proposes neural network architecture that consists of 6 sub-neural networks to solve the inverse kinematics problem for robotics manipulators with 2 or higher degrees of freedom. The neural networks utilized are multi-layered perceptron (MLP) with a back-propagation training algorithm. This approach will reduce the complexity of the algorithm and calculation (matrix inversion) faced when using the Inverse Geometric Models implementation (IGM) in robotics. The obtained results are presented and analyzed in order to prove the efficiency of the proposed approach.
基金Otokar Otomotiv ve Savunma Sanayi A.S. for the financial support
文摘Determination of ballistic performance of an armor solution is a complicated task and evolved significantly with the application of finite element methods(FEM) in this research field.The traditional armor design studies performed with FEM requires sophisticated procedures and intensive computational effort,therefore simpler and accurate numerical approaches are always worthwhile to decrease armor development time.This study aims to apply a hybrid method using FEM simulation and artificial neural network(ANN) analysis to approximate ballistic limit thickness for armor steels.To achieve this objective,a predictive model based on the artificial neural networks is developed to determine ballistic resistance of high hardness armor steels against 7.62 mm armor piercing ammunition.In this methodology,the FEM simulations are used to create training cases for Multilayer Perceptron(MLP) three layer networks.In order to validate FE simulation methodology,ballistic shot tests on 20 mm thickness target were performed according to standard Stanag 4569.Afterwards,the successfully trained ANN(s) is used to predict the ballistic limit thickness of 500 HB high hardness steel armor.Results show that even with limited number of data,FEM-ANN approach can be used to predict ballistic penetration depth with adequate accuracy.
文摘The present study was conducted to present the comparative modeling, predictive and generalization abilities of response surface methodology (RSM) and artificial neural network (ANN) for the thermal structure of stabilized confined jet diffusion flames in the presence of different geometries of bluff-body burners. Two stabilizer disc burners tapered at 30° and 60° and another frustum cone of 60°/30° inclination angle were employed all having the same diameter of 80 (mm) acting as flame holders. The measured radial mean temperature profiles of the developed stabilized flames at different normalized axial distances (x/dj) were considered as the model example of the physical process. The RSM and ANN methods analyze the effect of the two operating parameters namely (r), the radial distance from the center line of the flame, and (x/dj) on the measured temperature of the flames, to find the predicted maximum temperature and the corresponding process variables. A three-layered Feed Forward Neural Network in conjugation with the hyperbolic tangent sigmoid (tansig) as transfer function and the optimized topology of 2:10:1 (input neurons: hidden neurons: output neurons) was developed. Also the ANN method has been employed to illustrate such effects in the three and two dimensions and shows the location of the predicted maximum temperature. The results indicated the superiority of ANN in the prediction capability as the ranges of R2 and F Ratio are 0.868 - 0.947 and 231.7 - 864.1 for RSM method compared to 0.964 - 0.987 and 2878.8 7580.7 for ANN method beside lower values for error analysis terms.
文摘Background:Diabetes and hypertension are two of the commonest diseases in the world.As they unfavorably affect people of different age groups,they have become a cause of concern and must be predicted and diagnosed well in advance.Objective:This research aims to determine the effectiveness of artificial neural networks(ANNs)in predicting diabetes and blood pressure diseases and to point out the factors which have a high impact on these diseases.Sample:This work used two online datasets which consist of data collected from 768 individuals.We applied neural network algorithms to predict if the individuals have those two diseases based on some factors.Diabetes prediction is based on five factors:age,weight,fat-ratio,glucose,and insulin,while blood pressure prediction is based on six factors:age,weight,fat-ratio,blood pressure,alcohol,and smoking.Method:A model based on the Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network(MLP)was implemented.The inputs of the network were the factors for each disease,while the output was the prediction of the disease’s occurrence.The model performance was compared with other classifiers such as Support Vector Machine(SVM)and K-Nearest Neighbors(KNN).We used performance metrics measures to assess the accuracy and performance of MLP.Also,a tool was implemented to help diagnose the diseases and to understand the results.Result:The model predicted the two diseases with correct classification rate(CCR)of 77.6%for diabetes and 68.7%for hypertension.The results indicate that MLP correctly predicts the probability of being diseased or not,and the performance can be significantly increased compared with both SVM and KNN.This shows MLPs effectiveness in early disease prediction.
文摘Designing an authentication system for securing the power plants are important to allow only specific staffs of the power plant to access the certain blocks so that they can be restricted from using high risk-oriented equipment.This authentication is also vital to prevent any security threats or risks like compromises of business server,release of confidential data etc.Though conventional works attempted to accomplish better authentication,they lacked with respect to accuracy.Hence,the study aims to enhance the recognition rate by introducing a voice recognition system as a personal authentication based on Deep Learning(DL)due to its ability to perform effective learning.The study proposes Equivalent Rectangular Bandwidth and Deep Multi-Layer Perceptron(ERB-DMLP)as it has the ability to perform efficient and relevant feature extraction and faster classification.This algorithm also has the ability to establish effective correlation between voices and images and achieve the semantic relationship between them.Voice preprocessing is initially performed to make it suitable for further processing by removing the noise and enhancing the quality of signal.This process is also vital to minimize the extra computations so that the overall efficacy of the system can be made flexible by considering the audio files as features and the images as labels to identify a person’s voice by classifying the extracted features from the ERB Feature Extraction.This is then passed as the input into DMLP model to classify the persons,and trained the model to make an accurate classification of audio with corresponding image labels,and perform the performance test based on the trained model.Flexibility,relevant feature extraction and faster classification ability of the proposed work has made it explore better outcomes that is confirmed through results.
文摘<div style="text-align:justify;"> <span style="font-family:Verdana;">Sensitivity analysis of neural networks to input variation is an important research area as it goes some way to addressing the criticisms of their black-box behaviour. Such analysis of RBFNs for hydrological modelling has previously been limited to exploring perturbations to both inputs and connecting weights. In this paper, the backward chaining rule that has been used for sensitivity analysis of MLPs, is applied to RBFNs and it is shown how such analysis can provide insight into physical relationships. A trigonometric example is first presented to show the effectiveness and accuracy of this approach for first order derivatives alongside a comparison of the results with an equivalent MLP. The paper presents a real-world application in the modelling of river stage shows the importance of such approaches helping to justify and select such models.</span> </div>
文摘Estimating average vertical pillar stresses is a critical step in designing room-and-pillar mines.Several analytical methods can be used to estimate the vertical stresses acting on the pillars.However,the present analytical methods fail to adequately account for the influence of abutments on the distribution of vertical stresses,especially when applied to narrow panel widths and pillar layouts comprising evenly spaced barriers.In this study,a multi-layer perceptron neural network(MLPNN)was applied to predict the vertical loads of regular pillars more accurately.Hundreds of room-and-pillar mine layouts were modeled using a displacement discontinuity method(DDM),and a database of 2355 sampled pillar cases was compiled.The MLPNN was trained based on this database,and its prediction capabilities were further validated using simulations by a finite difference code(i.e.,FLAC3D).The model predictions and the FLAC3D simulations reasonably agreed with a regression coefficient of 0.99.The model was also adapted for mine cases with evenly spaced barrier pillars,and its application to a real case study mine has shown to provide accurate pillar stress estimations;hence,this model is suitable for practical use at mines.Even though the MLPNN model cannot be applied universally to all mine situations,it seems as a significant improvement over existing analytical techniques in terms of accounting for the influence of abutments on pillar stresses.