Strength Of Blast Furnace Slag Research Articles

Predicting Compressive Strength of Blast Furnace Slag and Fly Ash Based Sustainable Concrete Using Machine Learning Techniques: An Application of Advanced Decision-Making Approaches

The utilization of waste industrial materials such as Blast Furnace Slag (BFS) and Fly Ash (F. Ash) will provide an effective alternative strategy for producing eco-friendly and sustainable concrete production. However, testing is a time-consuming process, and the use of soft machine learning (ML) techniques to predict concrete strength can help speed up the procedure. In this study, artificial neural networks (ANNs) and decision trees (DTs) were used for predicting the compressive strength of the concrete. A total of 1030 datasets with eight factors (OPC, F. Ash, BFS, water, days, SP, FA, and CA) were used as input variables for the prediction of concrete compressive strength (response) with the help of training and testing individual models. The reliability and accuracy of the developed models are evaluated in terms of statistical analysis such as R2, RMSE, MAD and SSE. Both models showed a strong correlation and high accuracy between predicted and actual Compressive Strength (CS) along with the eight factors. The DT model gave a significant relation to the CS with R2 values of 0.943 and 0.836, respectively. Hence, the ANNs and DT models can be utilized to predict and train the compressive strength of high-performance concrete and to achieve long-term sustainability. This study will help in the development of prediction models for composite materials for buildings.

The influence of the chemical composition of the clinker on the strength properties of blast furnace slag cements

The Authors describe an attempt of correlating, by means of the linear regression analysis, the chemical composition of the Portland clinker to the compressive strength of blast furnace slag cements. The investigation shows that the main constituents of the clinker do not influence the compressive strength of the slag fraction, which, in turn, is influenced by the alkali content of the clinker. Although it has been not yet possible distinguishing the rôle soluble alkalis from that of the total content, nevertheless compressive strength of blast furnace slag cements appears to depend upon two different and opposite contributions pertaining to the clinker fraction, negatively affected by its alkali content, at least at medium and long ages and the other belonging to the slag fraction, positively influenced by the same alkali content.