Prediction of the Compressive Strength of Recycled Aggregate Concrete Based on Artificial Neural Network

Recycled aggregate concrete (RAC), due to its high porosity and the residual cement and mortar on its surface, exhibits weaker strength than common concrete. To guarantee the safe use of RAC, a compressive strength prediction model based on artificial neural network (ANN) was built in this paper, which can be applied to predict the RAC compressive strength for 28 days. A data set containing 88 data points was obtained by relative tests with different mix proportion designs. The data set was used to develop an ANN, whose optimal structure was determined using the trial-and-error method by taking cement content (C), sand content (S), natural coarse aggregate content (NCA), recycled coarse aggregate content (RCA), water content (W), water–colloid ratio (WCR), sand content rate (SR), and replacement rate of recycled aggregate (RRCA) as input parameters. On the basis of different numbers of hidden layers, numbers of hidden layer neurons, and transfer functions, a total of 840 different back propagation neural network (BPNN) models were developed using MATLAB software, which were then sorted according to the correlation coefficient R2. In addition, the optimal BPNN structure was finally determined to be 8–12–8–1. For the training set, the correlation coefficient R2 = 0.97233 and RMSE = 2.01, and for the testing set, the correlation coefficient R2 = 0.96650 and RMSE = 2.42. The model prediction deviations of the two were both less than 15%, and the results show that the ANN achieved pretty accurate prediction on the compressive strength of RAC. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was carried out, through which the impact of the input parameters on the predicted compressive strength of the RAC was obtained.