• Computers and Concrete
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• 제25권5호
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• pp.401-409
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• 2020

Artificial neural networks are used as a useful tool in distinct fields of civil engineering these days. In order to control long-term quality of Self-Compacting Semi-Lightweight Concrete (SCSLC), the 90 days compressive strength is considered as a key issue in this paper. In fact, combined artificial neural networks are used to predict the compressive strength of SCSLC at 28 and 90 days. These networks are able to re-establish non-linear and complex relationships straightforwardly. In this study, two types of neural networks, including Radial Basis and Multilayer Perceptron, were used. Four groups of concrete mix designs also were made with two water to cement ratios (W/C) of 0.35 and 0.4, as well as 10% of cement weight was replaced with silica fume in half of the mixes, and different amounts of superplasticizer were used. With the help of rheology test and compressive strength results at 7 and 14 days as inputs, the neural networks were used to estimate the 28 and 90 days compressive strengths of above-mentioned mixes. It was necessary to add the 14 days compressive strength in the input layer to gain acceptable results for 90 days compressive strength. Then proper neural networks were prepared for each mix, following which four existing networks were combined, and the combinatorial neural network model properly predicted the compressive strength of different mix designs.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제10권2호
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• pp.197-217
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• 2012

This research deals with the prediction of compressive strength of normal and high strength concrete using neural networks. The compressive strength was modeled as a function of eight variables: quantities of cement, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate, micro-silica, water and super-plasticizer, maximum size of coarse aggregate, fineness modulus of fine aggregate. Two networks, one using raw variables and another using grouped dimensionless variables were constructed, trained and tested using available experimental data, covering a large range of concrete compressive strengths. The neural network models were compared with regression models. The neural networks based model gave high prediction accuracy and the results demonstrated that the use of neural networks in assessing compressive strength of concrete is both practical and beneficial. The performance of model using the grouped dimensionless variables is better than the prediction using raw variables.

• Advances in Computational Design
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• 제3권3호
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• pp.289-302
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• 2018

The use of optimum content of supplementary cementing materials (SCMs) such as limestone filler (LF) to blend with Portland cement has been resulted in many environmental and technical advantages, such as increase in physical properties, enhancement of sustainability in concrete industry and reducing $CO_2$ emission are well known. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been already applied in civil engineering to solve a wide variety of problems such as the prediction of concrete compressive strength. The feed forward back propagation (FFBP) algorithm and Tan-sigmoid transfer function were used for the ANNs training in this study. The training, testing and validation of data during the backpropagation training process yielded good correlations exceeding 97%. A parametric study was conducted to study the sensitivity of the developed model to certain essential parameters affecting the compressive strength of concrete. The effects and benefits of limestone filler on hardened properties of the concrete such as compressive strength were well established endorsing previous results in the literature. The results of this study revealed that the proposed ANNs model showed a high performance as a feasible and highly efficient tool for simulating the LF concrete compressive strength prediction.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제24권2호
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• pp.137-150
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• 2019

In this paper, surrogate models such as multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) and M5P model tree (M5P MT) methods have been investigated in order to propose a new formulation for the 28-days compressive strength of self-compacting concrete (SCC) incorporating metakaolin as a supplementary cementitious materials. A database comprising experimental data has been assembled from several published papers in the literature and the data have been used for training and testing. In particular, the data are arranged in a format of seven input parameters covering contents of cement, coarse aggregate to fine aggregate ratio, water, metakaolin, super plasticizer, largest maximum size and binder as well as one output parameter, which is the 28-days compressive strength. The efficiency of the proposed techniques has been demonstrated by means of certain statistical criteria. The findings have been compared to experimental results and their comparisons shows that the MARS and M5P MT approaches predict the compressive strength of SCC incorporating metakaolin with great precision. The performed sensitivity analysis to assign effective parameters on 28-days compressive strength indicates that cementitious binder content is the most effective variable in the mixture.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제33권1호
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• pp.77-90
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• 2024

Waste foundry sand (WFS) is the waste product that cause environmental hazards. WFS can be used as a partial replacement of cement or fine aggregates in concrete. A database comprising 234 compressive strength tests of concrete fabricated with WFS is used. To construct the machine learning-based prediction models, the water-to-cement ratio, WFS replacement percentage, WFS-to-cement content ratio, and fineness modulus of WFS were considered as the model's inputs, and the compressive strength of concrete is set as the model's output. A base extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) model together with two hybrid XGBoost models mixed with the tunicate swarm algorithm (TSA) and the salp swarm algorithm (SSA) were applied. The role of TSA and SSA is to identify the optimum values of XGBoost hyperparameters to obtain the higher performance. The results of these hybrid techniques were compared with the results of the base XGBoost model in order to investigate and justify the implementation of optimisation algorithms. The results showed that the hybrid XGBoost models are faster and more accurate compared to the base XGBoost technique. The XGBoost-SSA model shows superior performance compared to previously published works in the literature, offering a reduced system error rate. Although the WFS-to-cement ratio is significant, the WFS replacement percentage has a smaller influence on the compressive strength of concrete. To improve the compressive strength of concrete fabricated with WFS, the simultaneous consideration of the water-to-cement ratio and fineness modulus of WFS is recommended.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제27권5호
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• pp.489-512
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• 2021

In this study, two powerful techniques, namely particle swarm optimization (PSO) and imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) were selected and combined with a pre-developed ANN model aiming at improving its performance prediction of the compressive strength of concrete modified with fly ash. To achieve this study's aims, a comprehensive database with 379 data samples was collected from the available literature. The output of the database is the compressive strength (CS) of concrete samples, which are influenced by 9 parameters as model inputs, namely those related to mix composition. The modeling steps related to ICA-ANN (or neuro-imperialism) and PSO-ANN (or neuro-swarm) were conducted through the use of several parametric studies to design the most influential parameters on these hybrid models. A comparison of the CS values predicted by hybrid intelligence techniques with the experimental CS values confirmed that the neuro-swarm model could provide a higher degree of accuracy than another proposed hybrid model (i.e., neuro-imperialism). The train and test correlation coefficient values of (0.9042 and 0.9137) and (0.8383 and 0.8777) for neuro-swarm and neuro-imperialism models, respectively revealed that although both techniques are capable enough in prediction tasks, the developed neuro-swarm model can be considered as a better alternative technique in mapping the concrete strength behavior.

• 한국콘크리트학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국콘크리트학회 1995년도 가을 학술발표회 논문집
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• pp.198-203
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• 1995

The objective of this study is to provide the information on the techniques of manufacturing and experiment in small scale modeling of precast concrete(P.C.)large panel structures. The adopted scale was 1/5th 4types of experiments were performed : material tests for model concrete and model reinforcement, compressive test of horizontal joint, shear test of vertical joint and cyclic static test of 2-story subassemblage structure. Based on the experimental results, the following conclusions are drawn: (1)Model concrete may have in general larger compressive strength than expected. (2) Model reinforcement can show less ductility if the annealing processes were performed without using vaccuum tube. (3) Failure modes of horizontal and vertical joints were almost same for both prototype and model. But the strength of model appears to be higher than required by similitude law. (4)Hysteretic behavior of 1/5 scale subassemblage model can be made quite similar to prototype's if the ductility of model reinforcement and compressive strength of model concrete could be representative of those of prototype.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제22권4호
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• pp.419-437
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• 2018

The compressive strength of self-compacting concrete (SCC) containing fly ash (FA) is highly related to its constituents. The principal purpose of this paper is to investigate the efficiency of hybrid fuzzy radial basis function neural network with biogeography-based optimization (FRBFNN-BBO) for predicting the compressive strength of SCC containing FA based on its mix design i.e., cement, fly ash, water, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate, superplasticizer, and age. In this regard, biogeography-based optimization (BBO) is applied for the optimal design of fuzzy radial basis function neural network (FRBFNN) and the proposed model, implemented in a MATLAB environment, is constructed, trained and tested using 338 available sets of data obtained from 24 different published literature sources. Moreover, the artificial neural network and three types of radial basis function neural network models are applied to compare the efficiency of the proposed model. The statistical analysis results strongly showed that the proposed FRBFNN-BBO model has good performance in desirable accuracy for predicting the compressive strength of SCC with fly ash.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제8권5호
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• pp.597-616
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• 2011

With respect to rehabilitation, strengthening and retrofitting of existing and deteriorated columns in buildings and bridges, CFRP sheets have been found effective in enhancing the performance of existing RC columns by wrapping and bonding CFRP sheets externally around the concrete. Concrete columns and piers that are confined by both lateral steel reinforcement and CFRP are sometimes referred to as "hybrid" concrete columns. With the availability of experimental data on concrete columns confined by steel reinforcement and/or CFRP, the study presents modeling using artificial neural networks (ANNs) to predict the compressive strength of hybrid circular RC columns. The prediction of the ultimate confined compressive strength of RC columns is very important especially when this value is used in estimating the capacity of structures. The present ANN model used as parameters for the confining materials the lateral steel ratio (${\rho}_s$) and the FRP volumetric ratio (${\rho}_{FRP}$). The model gave good predictions for three types of confined columns: (a) columns confined with steel reinforcement only, (b) CFRP confined columns, and (c) hybrid columns confined by both steel and CFRP. The model may be used for predicting the compressive strength of existing circular RC columns confined with steel only that will be strengthened or retrofitted using CFRP.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제33권2호
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• pp.137-145
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• 2024

The technique of experimentally determining concrete's compressive strength for a given mix design is time-consuming and difficult. The goal of the current work is to propose a best working predictive model based on different machine learning algorithms such as Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM), Stacked Ensemble (SE), Distributed Random Forest (DRF), Extremely Randomized Trees (XRT), Generalized Linear Model (GLM), and Deep Learning (DL) that can forecast the compressive strength of ternary geopolymer concrete mix without carrying out any experimental procedure. A geopolymer mix uses supplementary cementitious materials obtained as industrial by-products instead of cement. The input variables used for assessing the best machine learning algorithm not only include individual ingredient quantities, but molarity of the alkali activator and age of testing as well. Myriad statistical parameters used to measure the effectiveness of the models in forecasting the compressive strength of ternary geopolymer concrete mix, it has been found that GBM performs better than all other algorithms. A sensitivity analysis carried out towards the end of the study suggests that GBM model predicts results close to the experimental conditions with an accuracy between 95.6 % to 98.2 % for testing and training datasets.