Buckling and ultimate load prediction models for perforated steel beams using machine learning algorithms

Abstract

Large web openings introduce complex structural behaviors and additional failure modes of steel cellular beams, which must be considered in the design using laborious calculations (e.g., exercising SCI P355). This paper presents seven machine learning (ML) models, including decision tree (DT), random forest (RF), k-nearest neighbor (KNN), gradient boosting regressor (GBR), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM), and gradient boosting with categorical features support (CatBoost), for predicting the elastic buckling and ultimate loads of steel cellular beams. Large datasets of finite element (FE) simulation results, validated against experimental data, were used to develop the models. The ML models were fine-tuned via an extensive hyperparameter search to obtain their best performance. The elastic buckling and ultimate loads predicted by the optimized ML models demonstrated excellent agreement with the numerical data. The accuracy of the ultimate load predictions by the ML models exceeded the accuracy provided by the existing design provisions for steel cellular beams published in SCI P355 and AISC Design Guide 31. The relative feature importance and feature dependence of the models were evaluated and discussed in the paper. An interactive Python-based notebook and a user-friendly web application for predicting the elastic buckling and ultimate loads of steel cellular beams using the developed optimized ML models were created and made publicly available. The web application deployed to the cloud allows for making predictions in any web browser on any device, including mobile. The source code of the application available on GitHub allows running the application locally and independently from the cloud service.