Experimental investigation and AI prediction modelling of ceramic waste powder concrete – An approach towards sustainable construction

The ceramic waste powder (CWP) is generated in the ceramic industry during the cutting and polishing stages. It is harmful to the environment and needs a massive area for disposal. Therefore, an alternative way is required to reduce the environmental pollution and landfill caused by CWP. The aim of the study is to establish an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model for CWP concrete from the experimental results to save time and cost. Advancements in AI have made the estimation of concrete mechanical characteristics possible by employing Machine Learning (ML) approaches. In the current study, 60 concrete mixes with waste CWP are made as a partial replacement of cement by 10% and 20%. The plain concrete's ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) is taken as a reference. Furthermore, supervised ML techniques (i.e., Bagging, XG Boost, AdaBoost) and standalone (Decision tree) are employed to foresee the UPV of CWP concrete (CWPC). The prediction model's performance is evaluated using R2, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values, and Mean Absolute Error (MAE). The k-fold cross-validation is used to validate the performance of the prediction model. The XG Boost model, with an R2 value of 0.95, performed better compared to Bagging, AdaBoost, and DT models. Among all ensemble and individual models, the XG Boost model performs better with higher R2 and lower RMSE (0.081 km/s) and MAE (0.063 km/s) values. Therefore, the CWPC, as a construction material, would reduce land degradation and water pollution. In addition, applying ML techniques for estimating concrete characteristics would have reduced the consumption of efforts, resources, and time of researchers in the construction sector.