Abstract: In order to assist the driver in operating the shield machine and provide the operation suggestions, 5 075 101 pieces of time step data of shield tunnelling are extracted from 9 shield tunnel projects, the minimized energy consumption of shield and shortest construction duration are established as the decision-making goals, and the two tunnelling parameters including rotating speed of the cutterhead and total thrust actively operated by the shield machine driver are optimized by using the PSO algorithm, so as to provide the driver with operation suggestions based on the optimization range of various types of soil. As indicated by the comparison of the results before and after optimization in the study: (1) After optimization with the minimized energy consumption of shield being the decision-making goal,the distribution range of cutterhead rotating speed and total thrust is reduced considerably, the rank of distribution range in a descending order is sand layer, soil layer and gravel layer, and the advance rate is also increased. (2) After optimization with the shortest construction duration being the decision-making goal, the rank of cutterhead rotating speed in a descending order is soil layer, sand layer and gravel layer. The rank of total thrust and advance rate in a descending order is sand layer, soil layer and gravel layer. After the optimization, the advance rate is increased markedly and the duration is shortened. (3) The cutterhead rotating speed, total thrust and advance rate after optimization with the shortest construction duration being the decision-making goal are generally greater than the cutterhead rotating speed, total thrust and advance rate after optimization with the minimized energy consumption being the decision-making goal. Proper increase of cutterhead rotating speed and total thrust will increase the advance rate and shorten the construction duration.