Forecasting Compressive Strength of RHA Based Concrete Using Multi-Expression Programming

Abstract

Rice husk ash (RHA) is a significant pollutant produced by agricultural sectors that cause a malignant outcome to the environment. To encourage the re-use of RHA, this work used multi expression programming (MEP) to construct an empirical model for forecasting the compressive nature of concrete made with RHA (CRHA) as a cement substitute. Thus, the compressive strength of CRHA was developed comprising of 192 findings from the broad and trustworthy database obtained from literature review. The most significant characteristics, namely the specimen’s age, the percentage of RHA, the amount of cement, superplasticizer, aggregates, and the amount of water, were used as input for the modeling of CRHA. External validation, sensitivity analysis, statistical checks, and Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) analysis were used to evaluate the models’ performance. It was discovered that the most significant factors impacting the compressive strength of CRHA are the age of the concrete sample (AS), the amount of cement (C) and the amount of aggregate (A). The findings of this study have the potential to increase the re-use of RHA in the production of green concrete, hence promoting environmental protection and financial gain.