The rapid rise in global population and industrial activity has intensified environmental challenges, particularly carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from the cement and concrete industry. Biochar, a carbon-rich byproduct of biomass pyrolysis, has emerged as a promising solution for sustainable construction by enhancing carbon sequestration and improving mechanical performance when partially substituting cement. This study integrates experimental evidence with advanced machine learning (ML) techniques to evaluate the compressive strength, cost-efficiency, and carbon footprint of biochar-incorporated concrete. A comprehensive dataset of nine input parameters, including cement, aggregates, silica fume, fly ash, biochar, water, superplasticizer, and curing age was modeled using multiple ML approaches. Among the models tested, the hybrid XGB-Histogram Gradient Boosting (XGB-HistGB) model consistently achieved the best overall performance, with a testing R2 of 0.958, the lowest mean absolute error (3.03), and minimal prediction bias. This model outperformed standalone algorithms and other hybrids, providing reliable accuracy across compressive strength, cost, and embodied CO₂ predictions. SHAP and partial dependence analyses confirmed fine aggregate, curing age, and superplasticizer as the most influential parameters, while biochar dosage required careful optimization to balance strength retention with sustainability benefits. A user-friendly graphical interface was also developed, enabling real-time prediction of compressive strength, material cost, and CO₂ emissions based on user-defined mix proportions. Overall, the findings demonstrate that biochar can be effectively integrated into sustainable concrete formulations, and the XGB-HistGB model offers a powerful AI-driven predictive framework to optimize both structural performance and environmental outcomes.
M. Uddin, Md. Samsuzzaman Sobuz, Mohamed Ghalla et al.· Scientific Reports· 0 citations
The rapid rate of urbanization and industrialization has driven the excessive use of natural resources like river sand and gravel, raising significant sustainability concerns. Waste foundry sand (WFS), a discarded by-product of ferrous and nonferrous metal casting industries, offers a promising substitute for natural sand in concrete. This study focuses on predicting the compressive strength (CS) of WFS-infused concrete by analyzing the impact of various factors, such as cement content, WFS proportion, supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), water, aggregate composition, and superplasticizer (SP) usage. A data set comprising 401 mix ratios and their corresponding strengths was developed using systematic literature review approach and analyzed using advanced machine-learning (ML) models, including extreme gradient boosting (XGB), categorial boosting (CatB), light gradient boosting, gradient boosting, decision tree,
k
-nearest neighbor, adaptive boosting, bagging regressor, and random forest. The data set was divided into training and testing subsets, and statistical evaluations were performed to determine correlations between input parameters and strength. Among the models, XGB and CatB demonstrated the highest accuracy (
R
2
=
0.98
and 0.97 for training data;
R
2
=
0.83
and 0.86 for testing data, respectively). Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) and partial dependence plot (PDP) analysis revealed that water content and curing age significantly enhanced compressive strength. Furthermore, the developed graphical user interface will help to practically estimate the compressive strength of WFS concrete without any experimental trials.
M. H. R. Sobuz, Md. Kawsarul Islam Kabbo, Abdullah Alzlfawi et al.· Journal of Structural Design...· 0 citations
This study develops an integrated machine learning-experimental framework to predict the compressive strength (CS) of concrete incorporating ternary industrial wastes glass powder, marble powder, and iron ore slag. For this purpose, a dataset comprising 366 mix ratios and corresponding CS values was compiled from various sources for analysis. Advanced machine learning (ML) algorithms, including extreme gradient boosting (XGB), gradient boosting, and random forest (RF), were employed alongside hybrid techniques such as XGB-GBR and XGB-RF to evaluate the influence of these materials on strength. Based on the outcomes of the analysis, the hybrid XGB-GBR model demonstrates the highest balanced performance for both training (R2 = 0.911) and testing (R2 = 0.869) data sets. For validating the ML modeling and developing an interactive graphical user interface (GUI), experimental evaluation of CS and scanning electron microscopy was conducted. Additionally, feature importance modeling and optimization identified curing age and coarse aggregate as the most influential factors that would impact the model prediction. The contribution of this research lies in the combined modeling and experimental evaluation of a ternary waste concrete system, along with the development of a GUI. This deployable GUI will enhance the industrial applicability of ML-based concrete optimization by reducing material costs, minimizing trial batching, and supporting sustainable mix design practices.
Md. Samsuzzaman Sobuz, Md. Kawsarul Islam Kabbo, Abdullah Alzlfawi et al.· Scientific Reports· 0 citations
ABSTRACT Basalt Fiber Reinforced Concrete (BFRC) is being recognized as an eco-friendly advanced material with reduced environmental footprint, higher mechanical performance and long-term durability. However, its compressive strength prediction still appears to be a difficult problem due to the nonlinearity caused by the interaction of the mix components. This paper demonstrates a production-quality hybrid ML model to predict 28-day compressive strength of BFRC, providing an economical alternative to laborious and expensive laboratory-based testing. A well-defined database of 450 samples is generated involving the essential parameters, such as cement (440 kg/m3), SCMs (110 kg/m3), basalt fiber (0–4.25 kg/m3), fine aggregate (740 kg/m3), and coarse aggregate (975 kg/m3), water (121 kg/m3), superplasticizer (3.52 kg/m3), and curing period (3–365 days). The pre-processed and normalized data were partitioned into the training set (80%) and the test set (20%). Five ML models Gradient Boosting (GB), Cat Boost (CB), Light GBM (LGB), and their hybrid ensembles: GB+CB, GB+LGB were trained and compared using different metrics such as R2, RMSE, MAE, MedAE, etc. Among all ML models, the GB+LGBM model showed the best performance with R2 = 0.9445, RMSE = 5.99 MPa, MAE = 3.62 MPa, and MedAE = 2.26 MPa on the test set. SHAP analysis revealed that coarse aggregates (SHAP ≈+8) and cement (SHAP ≈+7) were the most influential factors, while the remaining water content and the excessive dosage of fiber were disadvantageous. Estimated compressive strength varied from 20 to 140 MPa. This study shows a novel approach by demonstrating the ability of ensemble ML models to capture complex concrete behavior, providing a data-driven approach for sustainable manufacturing of concrete. However, full reliance on the literature-based dataset still has significant limitations, which will increase noise, and these limitations can be further overcome by experimental validation in future studies.
Ibrahim Y. Hakeem, Abdullah Alzlfawi, M. H. R. Sobuz et al.· Matéria· 0 citations