Effects of Drying Temperature and Aggregate Shape on the Concrete Compressive Strength: Experiments and Data Mining Techniques

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of the geometry and size of the aggregate, as well as the drying temperature on the compressive strength of the ordinary concrete. To this end, two aggregates with sharp and round corners were prepared in three different aggregate sizes. After preparing concrete samples, the drying operations were carried out in the vicinity of room temperature, cold wind, and hot wind. Next, the linear relationship between the concrete strength and the studied parameters was estimated using Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) method. Finally, the Taguchi Sensitivity Analysis (TSA) and Decision Tree Analysis (DTA) were applied in order to determine the importance of the parameters on the compressive strength of concrete. As a result, it is obtained that the aggregate size has the greatest influence on the compressive strength of the ordinary concrete followed by drying temperature as stated by method TSA and DTA. In addition, the influence percentages reported for each parameter by Taguchi approach and decision tree method are matched. The prediction of the strength obtained by Taguchi method and second-order regression with the experimental data are in a good agreement. It was concluded that the impact of drying temperature on the concrete strength is several times greater than the effect of the aggregate geometry. Finally, the main conclusion of this research is related to the application of cold wind for drying operation, which leads to an increase of the compressive strength by 8.67% and 11.55% for ordinary concrete containing a constant aggregate size of 20 and aggregate geometries of round and sharp corners, respectively.