In order to predict and improve the performance of natural gas/diesel dual fuel engine (DFE), a combustion rate model based on forward neural network was built to study the combustion process of the DFE. The effect of the operatin g parameters on combustion rate was also studied by means of this model. The stu dy showed that the predicted results were good agreement with the experimental d a ta. It was proved that the developed combustion rate model could be used to succ essfully predict and optimize the combustion process of dual fuel engine. In order to predict and improve the performance of natural gas / diesel dual fuel engine (DFE), a combustion rate model based on forward neural network was built to study the combustion process of the DFE. The effect of the operatin g parameters on combustion rate was also studied by means of this model. The stu dy showed that the predicted results were good agreement with the experimental da ta. It was proved that the developed combustion rate model could be used to succ essfully predict and optimize the combustion process of dual fuel. engine.