Applying several machine learning approaches for prediction of unconfined compressive strength of stabilized pond ashes

Abstract

This paper evaluates the potential of five modeling approaches, namely M5 model tree, random forest, artificial neural networks, support vector machines and Gaussian processes, for the prediction of unconfined compressive strength of stabilized pond ashes with lime and lime sludge. The study not only presents five models for the same set of data but also compares the overall performance of them. Dataset used consists of 255 samples acquired from laboratory experiments. Out of the total, 170 randomly chosen samples were used for training and remaining 85 were used for testing the models. Input dataset consists of eight parameters (uniformity coefficient, coefficient of curvature, maximum dry density, optimum moisture content, lime, lime sludge, curing period and 7-day soaked California bearing ratio), while the output is UCS value at 7, 28, 45, 90 and 180 days of curing. Comparisons of results propose that Gaussian processes modeling strategy works well and the overall performance was substantially nearer to the exact agreement line. As a result of GP model, higher value of CC = 0.997 and lower values of RMSE = 23.016 kPa and MAE = 16.455 were obtained for testing the dataset. Sensitivity analysis suggests that lime, lime sludge, curing period and California bearing ratio are the significant parameters for predicting the unconfined compressive strength of stabilized pond ashes. The results confirmed that GP models are in a position to predict the unconfined compressive strength of stabilized pond ashes with an excessive degree of accuracy; however, GP modeling approach proves that this approach is more economical and less difficult in comparison with tedious laboratory work.