Prediction of Compressive Strength of Self-Compacting Concrete (SCC) with Silica Fume Using Neural Networks Models

Abstract

Self-Compacting Concrete (SCC) is a relatively new type of concrete with high workability, high volume of paste and containing cement replacement materials such as slag, natural pozzolana and silica fume. Cement replacement materials provide a wide variety of benefits such as lower cost, reduced consumption of natural resources, reduced carbon dioxide emissions and improved fresh and hardened properties. SCC is used in many applications such as sections with congested reinforcement and high rise shear walls and there is a need for the prediction of the performance of SCC used. Artificial Neural networks (ANN) are widely used in civil engineering for the prediction of the performance of some engineering materials such as compressive strength and durability. However, currently, studies on SCC containing silica fume are very rare. In this paper, an artificial neural networks (ANN) model is developed to predict the compressive strength of SCC with silica fume using the Levenberg-Marquardt back propagation algorithm based on a database from 366 experimental studies. The model developed was correlated with a nonlinear relationship between the constituents (input) and the compressive strength of SCC (output). To evaluate the predictive ability and generalize the developed model, other researchers’ experimental results were compared with the model prediction and good agreements are found. A parametric study was conducted to study the sensitivity of the ANN proposed model to some parameters such as water/binder ratio and superplasticizer content. The model developed in this study can potentially be used for SCC compressive strength prediction with very acceptable results and a high correlation coefficient R2=0.93. The developed model is practical, easy to use and user friendly. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2021-03091642 Full Text: PDF