A Knowledge-Based System for Fine Aggregate Material Problem Selection in Concrete Production

Abstract

One of the main problems of our country is inability to select the right materials of high quality in production. Decision making based on multiple criteria has an important role to do the right selections in each sector. One of these sectors is construction. Construction sector develops rapidly and using the right material is an important issue. Using the right material in this period when construction sector develops rapidly has a great importance. In the construction sector, the building material which has been used the most widely from past to present is concrete. In this study, a knowledge-based system via TOPSIS approach was proposed to generalize the multi-criteria decision making problems of fine aggregate material selection in concrete production. In addition, six different mortar series were produced by using the fine aggregates which were obtained from various plants used in the production of ready-mixed concrete in Kütahya and CEN Standard sand. The methylene blue, physical and mechanical tests were carried out on the produced mortars in order to get an idea for the strength and durability of concrete. The purpose of the study was to determine which of the five different fine aggregates had characteristics that are the closest to those of CEN Standard sand based on defined these multi criteria. It was found that the best fine aggregate series was A based on the defined criteria by considering the results of the experiments, assigning weights based on importance and analyzing these with TOPSIS approach.