Comparative Analysis of Ensemble Learning Techniques and ANN for Prediction of Compressive Strength of Concrete Mix

Abstract: In this study, non-linear machine learning regressors and an artificial neural network (ANN) were modeled to predict the compressive strength of concrete mixes. A dataset of 1030 mix design data points with a wide range of compressive strength varying from M10 to M80 is taken into account. The data set comprised of 8 input parameters namely- cement, water, fine & coarse aggregate, flyash, slag, superplasticizer, and age. The paper also analyzes effects on the prediction of compressive strength due to waiving of the parameters with lesser importance factors. To improve the performances of models by reducing the variance, biases, and errors, K-fold cross-validation was examined. To examine the performances of the models, metrics such as coefficient of determination (R2) and mean square error (MSE) were employed. Most of the models can predict the compressive strength with good accuracy. Out of the 7-machine learning regressors and ANN models employed, Gradient Boosting Regressor yielded the best prediction accuracy of 0.9561 with the lowest MSE value of 0.0513.