Abstract: In process of shield tunneling in complex formation, wear of disc cutter is extremely serious and service life is hard to predict, and influence factors of the disc cutter wear are multi-dimensional and uncertain. In view of above problems, main influence factors of disc cutter wear life such as cutter installation raduis, excavation distance, penetration depth, cutter spacing width, rotating speed were analyzed, prediction model of wear life of shield disc cutter in complex formations based on genetic programming was established. Genetic programming can transform the problem of wear life prediction into the inductive problem of programs. The tree-shaped expression can reflect relationship between the influencing factors and the wear life under complex geological conditions. The engineering test results show that the average prediction error of the model is 16.07% and the mean square error of the model is 0.001 6, which are better than the simplified CSM model. The model solves the problem that the wear life of the disc cutter is difficult to predict, and provides a new solution for prediction of wear life of the disc cutter.