ALSTNet: Autoencoder fused long‐ and short‐term time‐series network for the prediction of tunnel structure

Abstract It is crucial to predict future mechanical behaviors for the prevention of structural disasters. Especially for underground construction, the structural mechanical behaviors are affected by multiple internal and external factors due to the complex conditions. Given that the existing models fail to take into account all the factors and accurate prediction of the multiple time series simultaneously is difficult using these models, this study proposed an improved prediction model through the autoencoder fused long‐ and short‐term time‐series network driven by the mass number of monitoring data. Then, the proposed model was formalized on multiple time series of strain monitoring data. Also, the discussion analysis with a classical baseline and an ablation experiment was conducted to verify the effectiveness of the prediction model. As the results indicate, the proposed model shows obvious superiority in predicting the future mechanical behaviors of structures. As a case study, the presented model was applied to the Nanjing Dinghuaimen tunnel to predict the stain variation on a different time scale in the future.