Design of Concrete Mixes by Systematic Steps and ANN

Abstract

The current research caters for the possibility of arriving at a system for designing concrete mixes easily using available materials locally by specified wide ranges of pre-requisites of three main prescribed properties to cover a good variety of practical mixes, which are water, water-cement ratio and total aggregate-cement ratio. Using these three properties, a tri-linear form was constructed by graphical technique manner based on absolute volume approach. This approach defines as a summation of absolute volume for each of these three materials individually water, cement and aggregate should be equal to the absolute volume of whole concrete mixture based on these altogether. A quad-form area which includes a wide range of mixes can be formed from this representation. This area should achieve all the prescribed properties aforementioned. Artificial neural network concept used in this study also to build easily and quickly system which can be translated into Excel sheet. This system predict proportions of concrete mixture and the compressive strength using the results designed by the quad-form area method in addition to the data from literature around 500 mixes based on local materials used in Iraq. Six input parameters (water to cement ratio, the slump, % of fine to total aggregate content, maximum aggregate size, fineness modulus of fine aggregate and the compressive strength) were used in this system to get the outputs. In addition, nine input parameters ((water, cement, sand and gravel contents) and the properties of the mix (Fineness modulus, W/C ratio, the slump, % of fine to total aggregate and the M.A.S)) were used as basis of compressive strength model. The algorithm of this system aimed to reduce the high number of trail mixes error as well as saving the labors, cost and time. Results indicated that the concrete mix design and the compressive strength model can be predicted accurately by using graphical perspective and the ANN approach.