Prediction of Pile Bearing Capacity Using Opposition‐Based Differential Flower Pollination‐Optimized Least Squares Support Vector Regression (ODFP‐LSSVR)

Pile foundations are widely used for high-rise structures constructed in soft ground. The bearing capacity of pile is a crucial parameter required during the design and construction phase of pile foundation engineering projects. In practice, accurate predictions of pile bearing capacity are challenging due to a complex interplay of various geotechnical engineering factors including pile characteristics and ground conditions. This study proposes a data-driven model for coping with the problem of interest that hybridizes machine learning and metaheuristic approaches. Least squares support vector regression (LSSVR) is used for analyzing a dataset containing historical records of pile tests. Based on such datasets, LSSVR is capable of generalizing a multivariate function that estimates values of pile bearing capacity based on a set of variables describing pile characteristics and ground conditions. Moreover, opposition-based differential flower pollination (ODFP) metaheuristic is proposed to optimize the LSSVR learning process. Experimental results supported by the statistical test showed that the proposed ODFP-optimized LSSVR can achieve a good predictive performance in terms of root mean square error, mean absolute percentage error mean absolute error, and coefficient of determination. These results confirm that the ODFP-optimized LSSVR can be a potential alternative to assist civil engineers in the task of pile bearing capacity estimation.