A dual search-based EPR with self-adaptive offspring creation and compromise programming model selection

Evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR) is extensively used in engineering for soil properties modeling. This grey-box technique uses evolutionary computing to produce simple, transparent and well-structured models in the form of polynomial equations that best explain the observed data. A key task is then to determine mathematical structures for modeling physical phenomena and to select the optimal EPR model. This requires an algorithm to search through the model structure space and successfully produce feasible solutions that honor a set of statistical metrics. The complexity of EPR models increases greatly, however, with the number of polynomial terms used to tune these models. In this paper, we propose an alternative EPR for modeling complex soil properties. We implement a dual search-based EPR with self-adaptive offspring creation as model structure search strategy and couple a compromise programming tool to select a model that is preferred statistically relative to models with different polynomial terms. We illustrate our method using real-world data to improve predictions of optimal moisture content and creep index for soils. Our results demonstrate that the models derived using the proposed methodology can predict soil properties with adequate accuracy, physical meaning and lower number of parameters and input variables.