Evaluation of the Strength of Slab-Column Connections with FRPs Using Machine Learning Algorithms

Slab-column connections with FRPs fail suddenly without warning. Machine learning (ML) models can model the behavior with high precision and reliability. Nineteen ML algorithms were examined and compared. The comparisons showed that the ensembled boosted tree model showed the best, most precise prediction with the highest coefficient of determination (R²) (0.98), the lowest Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) (44.12 kN), and the lowest Mean Absolute Error (MAE) (35.95 kN). The ensembled boosted model had an average of 0.99, a coefficient of variation of 12%, and a lower 95% of 0.97, respectively, in terms of the measured strength. Thus, it was found to be more accurate and consistent compared to all implemented machine learning models and selected traditional models. In addition, the significance of various parameters with respect to the predicted strength was identified, where the effective depth was the most significant by a factor of 0.9, and the concrete compressive strength was the lowest by a factor of 0.3.