Artificial Neural Network Model for Predicting Compressive Strength of Concrete

Abstract

Compressive strength of concrete is a commonly used criterion in evaluating concrete. Although testing of the compressive strength of concrete specimens is done routinely, it is performed on the 28th day after concrete placement. Therefore, strength estimation of concrete at early time is highly desirable. This study presents the effort in applying neural network-based system identification techniques to predict the compressive strength of concrete based on concrete mix proportions, maximum aggregate size (MAS), and slump of fresh concrete. Back-propagation neural networks model is successively developed, trained, and tested using actual data sets of concrete mix proportions gathered from literature. The test of the model by un-used data within the range of input parameters shows that the maximum absolute error for model is about 20% and 88% of the output results has absolute errors less than 10%. The parametric study shows that water/cement ratio (w/c) is the most significant factor affecting the output of the model. The results showed that neural networks has strong potential as a feasible tool for predicting compressive strength of concrete.