Masonry compressive strength prediction using artificial neural networks

The masonry is not only included among the oldest building materials, but it is also the most widely used material due to its simple construction and low cost compared to the other modern building materials. Nevertheless, there is not yet a robust quantitative method, available in the literature, which can reliably predict its strength, based on the geometrical and mechanical characteristics of its components. This limitation is due to the highly nonlinear relation between the compressive strength of masonry and the geometrical and mechanical properties of the components of the masonry. In this paper, the application of artificial neural networks for predicting the compressive strength of masonry has been investigated. Specifically, back-propagation neural network models have been used for predicting the compressive strength of masonry prism based on experimental data available in the literature. The comparison of the derived results with the experimental findings demonstrates the ability of artificial neural networks to approximate the compressive strength of masonry walls in a reliable and robust manner.- (undefined

Determining the Natural Frequency of Cantilever Beams Using ANN and Heuristic Search

An artificial neural network (ANN) is used to model the frequency of the first mode, using the beam length, the moment of inertia, and the load applied on the beam as input parameters on a database of 100 samples. Three different heuristic optimization methods are used to train the ANN: genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization algorithm and imperialist competitive algorithm. The suitability of these algorithms in training ANN is determined based on accuracy and runtime performance. Results show that, in determining the natural frequency of cantilever beams, the ANN model trained using GA outperforms the other models in terms of accuracy