Estimation of air overpressure using bat algorithm

Air overpressure (AOp) is an undesirable phenomenon in blasting operations. Due to high potential to cause damage to nearby structures and to cause injuries, to personnel or animals, AOp is one of the most dangerous adverse effect of blasting. For controlling and decreasing the effect of this phenomenon, it is necessary to predict it. Because of multiplicity of effective parameters and complexity of interactions among these parameters, empirical methods may not be fully appropriate for AOp estimation. The scope of this study is to predict AOp induced by blasting through a novel approach based on the bat algorithm. For this purpose, the parameters of 62 blasting operations were accurately recorded and AOp were measured for each operation. In the next stage, a new empirical predictor was developed to predict AOp. The results clearly showed the superiority of the proposed bat algorithm model in comparison with the empirical approaches.