An Interpretable Optimized Artificial Neural Network Framework for Concrete Compressive Strength Prediction

Taisir Mohsin; Duaa Muhsin; Waffaa Mohammed

Authors

Taisir Mohsin Department of Medical Physics, University of Al Shatrah ,Iraq
Duaa Muhsin Department of Civil Techniques, Southern Technical University , Iraq
Waffaa Mohammed Department of Anatomy and Histology, .University of Al Shatrah ,Iraq

Keywords:

Artificial Neural Network, Bayesian Optimization, Concrete Strength, Sensitivity Analysis

Abstract

Predicting concrete compressive strength is paramount to the structural safety, quality control and sustainable mix design processes. Although artificial neural networks (ANNs) are powerful nonlinear modeling capabilities , their performance is sensitive to data quality, and hyper-parameter configuration. This paper proposes a strong and full framework for automated machine learning that combines rigorous data preprocessing with full Bayesian hyper-parameter optimization. The proposed framework employs interquartile range (IQR)-based outlier removal on all eight input features (cement, blast furnace slag, fly ash, water, superplasticizer, coarse aggregate, fine aggregate, and curing age) and the target compressive strength, before removing duplicate mixture designs. After cleaning, the dataset is normalized to [−1, 1] and split into training, validation and test sets. A feedforward neural network is then searched over a wide hyper-parameter space, including network depth, neurons per layer, learning rate, training algorithm and activation function, with validation mean squared error as the objective .The optimized model achieves strong predictive performance on an independent test set : R=0.939 ,RMSE=5.304 MPa ,MAE=4.167 MPa and MAPE=14.832. Critically, the optimization process selected logsig as the best activation function, which is appropriate due to the positive, saturating nature of concrete strength growth. The study simultaneously performs statistical data cleansing and tuning of the model hyper-parameters to provide a clear and robust AI-based system for predicting the concrete compressive strength in smart construction projects.

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