• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.25-41
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• 2024

The measurement of pile bearing capacity is crucial for the design of pile foundations, where in-situ tests could be costly and time needed. The primary objective of this research was to investigate the potential use of fuzzy-based techniques to anticipate the maximum weight that concrete driven piles might bear. Despite the existence of several suggested designs, there is a scarcity of specialized studies on the exploration of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS) for the estimation of pile bearing capacity. This paper presents the introduction and validation of a novel technique that integrates the fire hawk optimizer (FHO) and equilibrium optimizer (EO) with the ANFIS, referred to as ANFIS_FHO and ANFIS_EO, respectively. A comprehensive compilation of 472 static load test results for driven piles was located within the database. The recommended framework was built, validated, and tested using the training set (70%), validation set (15%), and testing set (15%) of the dataset, accordingly. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis is performed in order to determine the impact of each input on the output. The results show that ANFIS_FHO and ANFIS_EO both have amazing potential for precisely calculating pile bearing capacity. The R² values obtained for ANFIS_FHO were 0.9817, 0.9753, and 0.9823 for the training, validating, and testing phases. The findings of the examination of uncertainty showed that the ANFIS_FHO system had less uncertainty than the ANFIS_EO model. The research found that the ANFIS_FHO model provides a more satisfactory estimation of the bearing capacity of concrete driven piles when considering various performance evaluations and comparing it with existing literature.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.117-126
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• 2024

There are many challenges in the construction of large-section tunnels, such as extremely soft rock and fractured zones. In order to solve these problems, the confined concrete support technology is proposed to control the surrounding rocks. The large-scale laboratory test is carried out to clarify mechanical behaviours of the combined confined concrete and traditional I-steel arches. The test results show that the bearing capacity of combined confined concrete arch is 3217.5 kN, which is 3.12 times that of the combined I-steel arch. The optimum design method is proposed to select reasonable design parameters for confined concrete arch. The parametric finite element (FE) analysis is carried out to study the effect of the design factors via optimum design method. The steel pipe wall thickness and the longitudinal connection ring spacing have a significant effect on the bearing capacity of the combined confined concrete arch. Based on the above research, the confined concrete support technology is applied on site. The field monitoring results shows that the arch has an excellent control effect on the surrounding rock deformation. The results of this research provide a reference for the support design of surrounding rocks in large-section tunnels.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.743-767
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• 2020

Due to the impressive flexural performance, enhanced compressive strength and more constrained crack propagation, Fibre-reinforced concrete (FRC) have been widely employed in the construction application. Majority of experimental studies have focused on the seismic behavior of FRC columns. Based on the valid experimental data obtained from the previous studies, the current study has evaluated the seismic response and compressive strength of FRC rectangular columns while following hybrid metaheuristic techniques. Due to the non-linearity of seismic data, Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) has been incorporated with metaheuristic algorithms. 317 different datasets from FRC column tests has been applied as one database in order to determine the most influential factor on the ultimate strengths of FRC rectangular columns subjected to the simulated seismic loading. ANFIS has been used with the incorporation of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic algorithm (GA). For the analysis of the attained results, Extreme learning machine (ELM) as an authentic prediction method has been concurrently used. The variable selection procedure is to choose the most dominant parameters affecting the ultimate strengths of FRC rectangular columns subjected to simulated seismic loading. Accordingly, the results have shown that ANFIS-PSO has successfully predicted the seismic lateral load with R² = 0.857 and 0.902 for the test and train phase, respectively, nominated as the lateral load prediction estimator. On the other hand, in case of compressive strength prediction, ELM is to predict the compressive strength with R² = 0.657 and 0.862 for test and train phase, respectively. The results have shown that the seismic lateral force trend is more predictable than the compressive strength of FRC rectangular columns, in which the best results belong to the lateral force prediction. Compressive strength prediction has illustrated a significant deviation above 40 Mpa which could be related to the considerable non-linearity and possible empirical shortcomings. Finally, employing ANFIS-GA and ANFIS-PSO techniques to evaluate the seismic response of FRC are a promising reliable approach to be replaced for high cost and time-consuming experimental tests.