A comparative study of concrete strength prediction using artificial neural network, multigene programming and model tree

In the current study 28 day strength of Recycled Aggregate Concrete (RAC) and Fly ash (class F) based concrete is predicted using Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Multigene Genetic Programming (MGGP) and Model Tree (MT). Four sets of models were designed for per cubic proportions of materials, Properties of materials and non-dimensional parameters as input parameters. The study shows that the predicted 28 day strength is in good agreement with the observed data and also generalize well to untrained data. ANN outperforms MGGP and MT in terms of model performance. Output of the developed models can be presented in terms of trained weights and biases in ANN, equations in MGGP and in the form of series of equations in MT. ANN, MGGP and MT can grasp the influence of input parameters which can be seen through Hinton diagrams in ANN, input frequency distribution in MGGP and coefficients of input parameters in MT. The study shows that these data driven techniques can be used for developing model/s to predict strength of concrete with an acceptable performance