Assessment of different machine learning techniques in predicting the compressive strength of self-compacting concrete

The compressive strength of self-compacting concrete (SCC) needs to be determined during the construction design process. This paper shows that the compressive strength of SCC (CS of SCC) can be successfully predicted from mix design and curing age by a machine learning (ML) technique named the Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB) algorithm, including non-hybrid and hybrid models. Nine ML techniques, such as Linear regression (LR), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Decision Trees (DTR), Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting (GB), and Artificial Neural Network using two training algorithms LBFGS and SGD (denoted as ANN_LBFGS and ANN_SGD), are also compared with the XGB model. Moreover, the hybrid models of eight ML techniques and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) are constructed to highlight the reliability and accuracy of SCC compressive strength prediction by the XGB_PSO hybrid model. The highest number of SCC samples available in the literature is collected for building the ML techniques. Compared with previously published works’ performance, the proposed XGB method, both hybrid and non-hybrid models, is the most reliable and robust of the examined techniques, and is more accurate than existing ML methods (R² = 0.9644, RMSE = 4.7801, and MAE = 3.4832). Therefore, the XGB model can be used as a practical tool for engineers in predicting the CS of SCC.