An investigation of flexural resistance of high-performance steel fiber-reinforced cementitious composites: data-driven prediction and experimental verification

This study establishes four popular data-driven techniques – Decision Tree (DT), Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Gradient Boosting (GB) for predicting the flexural strength (FS) of high-performance steel fiber-reinforced cementitious composites (FRCCs). A database containing 156 experimental records was used to train and test predictive models with nine feasible input variables. The results demonstrated that the GB model was the best predictor for estimating the FS of FRCCs. The GB model maintained satisfactory predictive accuracy after 10-fold cross-validation, achieving an average R2 of 0.834 on the validation folds generated from the training dataset. The predictive capability of GB model remained stable at 600 Monte Carlo simulations. The Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) method and partial dependence plots (PDP) indicated that fiber volume content was the most influential factor affecting FS predictions. To validate the accuracy of the GB model, a single-point case study was conducted on three specimens subjected to a three-point bending load. The discrepancy between the experimental values and GB predictions corresponded to an absolute prediction error of 1.21%, highlighting the accuracy of the developed model. Finally, a cloud-based web application was developed to provide a convenient tool for practical FS prediction of FRCCs.