Research on Predicting the Safety Factor of Plain Shotcrete Support in Laneways Based on BO-CatBoost Model

In general, the design of a safe and rational laneway support scheme signifies a crucial prerequisite for ensuring the security and efficiency of mining exploitation in mines. Nevertheless, the conventional empirical support system for mining laneways faces challenges in assessing the rationality of support methods, which can compromise the safety and reliability of the laneways. To address this issue, the safety factor was incorporated into research on laneway support, and a safety evaluation method for laneway support in line with the safety factor was established. In light of the data from a specific iron mine laneway in central China, the CRITIC method was employed to preprocess the sample data. Going one step further, a Bayesian algorithm was utilized to optimize the hyperparameters of the CatBoost model, followed by proposing a prediction model based on the BO-CatBoost model for evaluating laneway safety factors of plain shotcrete support. Furthermore, the performance indexes, such as the root mean square error (RMSE), the mean absolute error (MAE), the correlation coefficient (R²), the variance accounts for (VAF), and the a-20 index, were determined to examine the predictive performance of each proposed model. In contrast to the other models, the BO-CatBoost model demonstrated the optimal predictive output item for safety factors with the lowest RMSE and MAE, the largest R² and VAF, and an appropriate a-20 index value of 0.5688, 0.4074, 0.9553, 95.25%, and 0.9167 in the test set, respectively. Therefore, the BO-CatBoost model was proven to be the most appropriate machine learning method that can more accurately predict the safety factor, which will provide a novel approach for optimizing laneway support design and laneway safety evaluation.