The design of tunnels in rock masses often demands more informations on geologic features and rock mass properties than acquired by usual field survey and laboratory testings. In practice, the situation that a perfect set of geological and mechanical input data is given to geomechanics design engineer is rare, while the engineers are asked to achieve a high level of reliability in their design products. This study presents an artificial neural network which is developed to resolve the difficulties encountered in conventional design techniques, particulary the problem of deteriorating the confidence of existing numerical techniques such as the finite element, boundary element and distinct element methods due to the incomplete adn vague input data. The neural network has inferring capabilities to identify the possible failure modes, support requirements and its timing for underground openings, from previous case histories. Use of the neural network has resulted in a better estimate of the correlation between systems of rock mass classifications such as the RMR and Q systems. A back propagation learning algorithm together with a multi-layer network structure is adopted to enhance the inferential accuracy and efficiency of the neural network. A series of experiments comparing the results of the neural network with the actual field observations are performed to demonstrate the abilities of the artificial neural network as a new tunnel design assistance system.