Compressive Strength Prediction for Self-compacting Concrete Using Artificial Neural Networks

This study investigates the relationship between concrete constituent materials, slump values, density, strain and compressive strength. The database was set in the laboratory by performing a quality assurance test on the constituent materials to ascertain their suitability for concrete work.  For material procurement and selection, the British Standard Department of Environment DOE technique of concrete trial mix designs was used. In this study, twelve concrete mixes were utilized. Two simplified models were developed using the feedback network Artificial Neural Networks architecture (ANNs) with R version 4.0.5 and R studio version 1.2.5033. In the two models, an independent layer comprising six nodes and a dependent layer comprising two nodes were taken. Having carried out the sensitivity analysis, the capacity of the developed equation was evaluated in terms of error metrics MSE and RMSE. The grading envelope for river sand showed that the graph fell perfectly into grading envelope zone 2 while other constituent materials tested were all confirmed suitable for concrete works. The results of compressive strength were obtained from varied water-cement ratios used for the concrete trial mix design which ranges between 0.45 to 0.6. The compressive strength results showed that the results increased consistently for each design mix. It is worthy of note that the strength of the mix fell between grades 15, 20, 25 and 35 respectively for both the 7-day and 28-day strength accordingly. Conversely, the ANN models predicted both 7-day and 28-day strength close to the laboratory value. It is concluded that this research has demonstrated economic viability which would enhance overall construction planning efficiency for future researchers, consultants and contractors in the building industries.