Optimal Cement Mixtures Containing Mineral Admixtures under Multiple and Conflicting Criteria

Abstract

In modern construction industry, fabrication of sustainable concrete has turned the decision-making process into a challenging endeavor. One alternative is using fly ash and nanostructured silica as cement replacements. In these modern mixtures, proper concrete bulk density, percentage of voids, and compressive strength normally cannot be optimized individually. Hereby, a decision-making strategy on the replacement of those components is presented while taking into account those three performance measurements. e relationships among those components upon concrete fabrication required a design of experiments of mixtures to characterize those mineral admixtures. is approach integrates different objective functions that are in conflict and obtains the best compromise mixtures for the performance measures being considered. is optimization strategy permitted to recommend the combined use of fly ash and nanosilica to improve the concrete properties at its early age.

The Need of Statistical Approach for Optimising Mixture Design of Controlled Low-Strength Materials

“…Analytical methods help obtain the optimal concrete mixes based on in-depth and extensive experimental knowledge of certain heavy components and the fundamental formulae obtained from past experiments [30][31][32][33]. For example, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, and mathematical programming are tools for evaluating semi-experimental (analytic) methods based on a combination of experimental databases or predictive models developed for trial [34][35][36][37][38][39].…”