Predicting the flowability of UHPC and identifying its significant influencing factors using an accurate ANN model

Abstract

In this research, a one-hidden layer artificial neural network paradigm (ANN) was created to forecast the slump flow of ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC). To achieve this goal, 3,200 ANNs were evaluated to estimate the fresh UHPC’s slump flow utilizing 793 observations. The performance metrics measured on training and test data subsets were in the same order of magnitude, thereby pointing out the proper work of the k-fold validation procedure. The results of the connection weight approach analysis (CWA) indicated that water dosage had the highest positive importance in slump flow, preceding the superplasticizer volume ratio. Other factors that positively influenced slump flow were the water-to-powder ratio, the dosage of high-alkali glass powder, the water-to-binder ratio, and limestone concentration. The most negative influences on rheology were the high-alumina FC3R and metakaolin. The ANN accurately predicted the slump flow of UHPC, while the results of the CWA analysis were well-correlated with previous research.