GAN inversion method of an initial in situ stress field based on the lateral stress coefficient

Abstract The initial in situ stress field influences underground engineering design and construction. Since the limited measured data, it is necessary to obtain an optimized stress field. Although the present stress field can be obtained by valley evolution simulation, the accuracy of the ancient stress field has a remarkable influence. This paper proposed a method using the generative adversarial network (GAN) to obtain optimized lateral stress coefficients of the ancient stress field. A numerical model with flat ancient terrain surfaces is established. Utilizing the nonlinear relationship between measured stress components and present burial depth, lateral stress coefficients of ancient times are estimated to obtain the approximate ancient stress field. Uniform designed numerical tests are carried out to simulate the valley evolution by excavation. Coordinates, present burial depth, present lateral stress coefficients and ancient regression factors of lateral stress coefficients are input to GAN as real samples for training, and optimized ancient regression factors can be predicted. The present stress field is obtained by excavating strata layers. Numerical results show the magnitude and distribution law of the present stress field match well with measured points, thus the proposed method for the stress field inversion is effective.