Comparison of various machine learning algorithms used for compressive strength prediction of steel fiber-reinforced concrete

Adding hooked industrial steel fibers (ISF) to concrete boosts its tensile and flexural strength. However, the understanding of ISF’s influence on the compressive strength (CS) behavior of concrete is still questioned by the scientific society. The presented paper aims to use machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) algorithms to predict the CS of steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) incorporating hooked ISF based on the data collected from the open literature. Accordingly, 176 sets of data are collected from different journals and conference papers. Based upon the initial sensitivity analysis, the most influential parameters like water-to-cement (W/C) ratio and content of fine aggregates (FA) tend to decrease the CS of SFRC. Meanwhile, the CS of SFRC could be enhanced by increasing the amount of superplasticizer (SP), fly ash, and cement (C). The least contributing factors include the maximum size of aggregates (D(max)) and the length-to-diameter ratio of hooked ISFs (L/D(ISF)). Several statistical parameters are also used as metrics to evaluate the performance of implemented models, such as coefficient of determination (R(2)), mean absolute error (MAE), and mean of squared error (MSE). Among different ML algorithms, convolutional neural network (CNN) with R(2) = 0.928, RMSE = 5.043, and MAE = 3.833 shows higher accuracy. On the other hand, K-nearest neighbor (KNN) algorithm with R(2) = 0.881, RMSE = 6.477, and MAE = 4.648 results in the weakest performance.