Since the proposal of the new direction - intelligent rock mechanics and rock engineering (IRM) the methodology has been extensively validated and continuously improved. Recently, a series world famous large rock engineering with extremely complicated geological conditions has been constructed in China, which posed us with unprecedented difficulties and also great practice opportunities. IRM has been proved to be an powerful problem-solving methodology for such complicated rock engineering with extensively successful applications. Furthermore, significant extensions and improvements in theories, techniques and concepts of IRM have been proposed to overcome new difficulties. Even at present, the methodology of IRM has been becoming standard methods for rock engineering design. This work reviews the most recent development of IRM. It includes some important intelligent modeling methods and integrated intelligent de-sign concepts that have been proposed and validated, with applications to some of the most complicated rock engineering problems constructed in China during the last decade.
Because of the difficulties in modeling complex geo-logical conditions, nonlinear mechanical behaviors and many uncertainties in rock engineering construction, It is usually confusing to using deterministic method inherited from classical mechanics theories. Aiming to provide an alternative research scheme, a new direction - intelligent rock mechanics and rock engineering has been proposed in 1997 (Feng et al, 1997). It works in a interdisciplinary manner by applying the theory of newly developing areas, such as artificial intelligence, fuzzy mathematics, system science and other nonlinear mechanics to rock mechanics. The highlight of non 1:1 mapping method makes IRM much more powerful and convenient for modeling complicated rock mechanical problems. The methodology of IRM has been extensively validated and continuously improved since its proposal, in basic theories, fundamental techniques, algorithms and tools and applications.
