Modeling Compressive Strength of Eco-Friendly Volcanic Ash Mortar Using Artificial Neural Networking

Forecasting the compressive strength of concrete is a complex task owing to the interactions among concrete ingredients. In addition, an important characteristic of the concrete failure surface is its six-fold symmetry. In this study, an artificial neural network (ANN) and adaptive neuro fuzzy interface system (ANFIS) were employed to model the compressive strength of natural volcanic ash mortar (VAM) by using the six-fold symmetry of concrete failure. The modeling was correlated with four parameters. To train and test the projected models, data for more than 150 samples were collected from the literature. Furthermore, mortar samples with varying proportions of volcanic ash were prepared in the laboratory and tested, and the results were used to validate the models. The performance of the developed models was assessed using numerous statistical measures. The results show that both the ANN and ANFIS models accurately predict the compressive strength of VAM with R-square above 0.9 and lower error statistics. The permutation feature analysis confirmed that the age of specimens affects the strength of VAM the most, followed by the water-to-cement ratio, curing temperature, and percentage of volcanic ash.