Concrete strength prediction: Exploring an ensemble machine learning approach

Concrete strength prediction: Exploring an ensemble machine learning approach

Younes Alouan, Seif-Eddine Cherif, Badreddine Kchakech, Youssef Cherradi, Azzouz Kchikach

Abstract. The mechanical properties of concrete depend on a number of variables, which include the water cement ratio, the properties of materials, and the curing method. Recently, there has been an interest in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) methods. The current investigation utilized a number of Machine Learning (ML) models, including SVR, ANN, RFR, AdaBoost, XGBoost, and GBM, for making predictions of the compressive strength of concrete. The models considered in this investigation could offer accurate values. The data was collected from previous studies, which provided information on 1030 concrete samples. These samples were spread over a wide range of mix proportions and curing ages, thus guaranteeing good generalization capability of the models. The comparison of conventional models with ensembled models showed that there was a marked difference in favor of ensembled models after hyperparameter optimization. The R² value of XGBoost was seen to be 0.94 with a MAPE of 10.4% that was almost equal to the ANN model, while the R² value was seen to be 0.89 for the SVR.

Keywords
Concrete, Compressive Strength, Artificial intelligence, Machine Learning Algorithms, Ensemble Learning

Published online 1/10/2026, 8 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA

Citation: Younes Alouan, Seif-Eddine Cherif, Badreddine Kchakech, Youssef Cherradi, Azzouz Kchikach, Concrete strength prediction: Exploring an ensemble machine learning approach, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 58, pp 9-16, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644903933-2

The article was published as article 2 of the book Emerging Research in Materials for Environment, and Civil Infrastructure

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

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