Empirical modeling of flexural and splitting tensile strengths of concrete containing fly ash by GEP

In this paper, the flexural strength ($f_{fs}$) and splitting tensile strength ($f_{sts}$) of concrete containing different proportions of fly ash have been modeled by using gene expression programming (GEP). Two GEP models called GEP-I and GEP-II are constituted to predict the $f_{fs}$ and $f_{sts}$ values, respectively. In these models, the age of specimen, cement, water, sand, aggregate, superplasticizer and fly ash are used as independent input parameters. GEP-I model is constructed by 292 experimental data and trisected into 170, 86 and 36 data for training, testing and validating sets, respectively. Similarly, GEP-II model is constructed by 278 experimental data and trisected into 142, 70 and 66 data for training, testing and validating sets, respectively. The experimental data used in the validating set of these models are independent from the training and testing sets. The results of the statistical parameters obtained from the models indicate that the proposed empirical models have good prediction and generalization capability.