Prediction of Ultimate Strain and Strength of FRP-Confined Concrete Cylinders Using Soft Computing Methods

This paper investigates the effectiveness of four different soft computing methods, namely radial basis neural network (RBNN), adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) with subtractive clustering (ANFIS-SC), ANFIS with fuzzy c-means clustering (ANFIS-FCM) and M5 model tree (M5Tree), for predicting the ultimate strength and strain of concrete cylinders confined with fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets. The models were compared according to the root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute relative error (MARE) and determination coefficient (R2) criteria. Similar accuracy was obtained by RBNN and ANFIS-FCM, and they provided better estimates in modeling ultimate strength of confined concrete. The ANFIS-SC, however, performed slightly better than the RBNN and ANFIS-FCM in estimating ultimate strain of confined concrete, and M5Tree provided the worst strength and strain estimates. Finally, the effects of strain ratio and the confinement stiffness ratio on strength and strain were investigated, and the confinement stiffness ratio was shown to be more effective.