Using Gene Expression Programming to Determine the Impact of Minerals on Erosion Resistance of Selected Cohesive Egyptian Soils

Abstract

Cohesive sediment soils are encountered throughout Egypt at many locations, posing various physical and chemical characteristics in beds of lakes, estuaries and flash flood flows. The entire delta region is made up of clayey soil formed from various consecutive Nile floods before construction of the High Dam. Thus, it is very important to determine the erosional stability of such cohesive soils as a function of sediment chemical properties and mineral content. In the current research, 48 samples are collected from various locations throughout Egypt. All samples are subject to physical tests for grain size distribution, and X-ray diffraction analysis for mineral contents. Laboratory experiments are carried out on these samples for finding the difference in terms of erosion characteristics caused by different sediment composition among all samples. Assuming other properties of cohesive soils constant, the gene expression programming (GEP) algorithms are applied to relate the clay mineral content to experimental critical shear stress. Results show an excellent potentiality for the GEP for being applied on finding relations between complex parameters with nonlinear relationships with respect to soil erosion.© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.