Machine learning models development for shear strength prediction of reinforced concrete beam: a comparative study

Fiber reinforced polymer (FPR) bars have been widely used as a substitutional material of steel reinforcement in reinforced concrete elements in corrosion areas. Shear resistance of FRP reinforced concrete element can be affected by concrete properties and transverse FRP stirrups. Hence, studying the shear strength (V(s)) mechanism is one of the highly essential for pre-design procedure for reinforced concrete elements. This research examines the ability of three machine learning (ML) models called M5-Tree (M5), extreme learning machine (ELM), and random forest (RF) in predicting V(s) of 112 shear tests of FRP reinforced concrete beam with transverse reinforcement. For generating the prediction matrix of the developed ML models, statistical correlation analysis was conducted to generate the suitable inputs models for V(s) prediction. Statistical evaluation and graphical approaches were used to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed models. The results revealed that all the proposed models performed in general well for all the input combinations. However, ELM-M1 and M5-Tree-M5 models exhibited less accuracy performance in comparison with the other developed models. The study showed that the best prediction performance was revealed by M5 tree model using nine input parameters, with coefficient of determination (R(2)) and root mean square error (RMSE) equal to 0.9313 and 35.5083 KN, respectively. The comparison results also indicated that ELM and RF were performed significant results with a less slight performance than M5 model. The study outcome contributes to basic knowledge of investigating the impact of stirrups on V(s) of FRP reinforced concrete beam with the potential of applying different computer aid models.