ABSTRACT
Today the rock mechanical engineer is forced to develop safe and economic designs for systems, which are characterized by many influencing factors (technical parameters, rock mass parameter, economical parameters, environmental parameters etc.). In such systems it is more and more difficult to find optimal solutions and to define those parameters, which are really decisive. Therefore, classical procedures like parameter studies, ‘trial-and-error’-procedures and simple parameter fitting is replaced more and more by so-called mathematical optimization techniques. These techniques involve the following analysis methods:
• Sensitivity analysis Within a sensitivity analysis the influence of
individual input parameters on the model output is investigated. Based on the sensitivity analysis insignificant parameters can be excluded from further design and interaction of different parameters can be revealed.
