Predicting and optimizing the concrete compressive strength using an explainable boosting machine learning model
Authors: Trong‑Cuong Vo, Thi‑Quynh Nguyen, Viet‑Linh Tran
Asian Journal of Civil Engineering
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Publishing year: 7/2023
Accurate and understandable prediction of concrete compressive strength (CCS) and determining the optimal mixture to
maximize the CCS are crucial tasks in engineering structures. When experimental compression test-based CCS prediction
is laborious, expensive, and time-consuming, machine learning (ML) approaches can be used to predict the CCS accurately
and early. However, such ML models are challenging to understand due to a lack of explanation. This paper explores the
capacity of four boosting ML models, including adaptive boosting (AdaBoost), gradient boosting regression tree (GBRT),
extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), and categorical gradient boosting (CatBoost), in predicting the CCS. For this purpose, the comprehensive database of the CCS available in the literature is used to develop four boosting ML models. The
hyperparameters of the boosting ML models are determined using the bayesian optimization (BO) algorithm and tenfold
cross-validation. The results of four boosting ML models are evaluated and compared using the correlation coefcient, the
root mean square error, and the mean absolute error. The comparative results show that the XGBoost model outperforms
other models. Afterward, the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) method is used to interpret the predictions of the
XGBoost model globally and locally. Then, an efcient XGBoost-based web application (XGBoost-WA) is developed to
predict the CCS rapidly. Finally, the XGBoost-based Moth-fame Optimization (MFO) algorithm, called XGBoost-MFO, is
applied for mixture optimization to maximize the CCS. The result shows an improvement of 11% of CCS using the proposed
XGBoost-MFO model.
Boosting machine learning · Compressive concrete strength · Moth-fame optimization · Shapley additive explanations · Web application