Journal Pre-proof

Neural network models to predict explosive spalling of PP fiber reinforced concrete

under heating

Jin-Cheng Liu, Zhigang Zhang

PII: S2352-7102(20)30200-X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2020.101472
Reference: JOBE 101472

To appear in: Journal of Building Engineering

Received Date: 18 January 2020

Revised Date: 4 April 2020
Accepted Date: 27 April 2020

Please cite this article as: J.-C. Liu, Z. Zhang, Neural network models to predict explosive spalling
of PP fiber reinforced concrete under heating, Journal of Building Engineering (2020), doi: https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2020.101472.

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Credit author statement:

Zhigang Zhang: Conceptualization, Methodology. Jin-Cheng Liu: Validation, Data

curation. Jin-Cheng Liu: Writing—original draft preparation. Zhigang Zhang:
Writing—review and editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.
 1 Neural Network Models to Predict Explosive Spalling of PP Fiber

2 Reinforced Concrete under Heating

3 Jin-Cheng Liub, Zhigang Zhang a*

4
a
5 Key Laboratory of New Technology for Construction of Cities in Mountain
6 Area (Chongqing University), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400045, P R China.
7 E-mail: zhangzg@cqu.edu.cn;
b
8 Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam,
9 Hong Kong 999077, P R China.
10 E-mail: jcliu@hku.hk;

11 Abstract

12 Predicting explosive spalling of concrete containing polypropylene (PP) fibers at

13 elevated temperature is a challenging problem. It is difficult for traditional FEM or

14 DEM method to tackle this problem at the moment due to unclear mechanism of PP

15 fibers in mitigating explosive spalling and difficulty to measure instantaneous hot

16 permeability of concrete. This paper described development of two Artificial Neural

17 Network (ANN) models for assessment of explosive spalling risk of concrete. One

18 model (ANN1) was concrete mix-based, the other model (ANN2) was concrete

19 strength-based. A total of 306 and 300 test records collected from literature were used

20 to train ANN1 and ANN2, respectively. Twenty groups of heated tests were conducted

21 on high performance concrete and ultra-high performance concrete containing PP

22 fibers to validate ANN1 and ANN2. The two ANN models were successfully trained

23 and validated, with a prediction accuracy of 100% and 90% for ANN1 and ANN2,

24 respectively. Excellent prediction performance demonstrated the feasibility of ANN

1
25 models for predicting explosive spalling tendency of PP fiber reinforced concrete.

26 Keywords

27 Concrete; Explosive spalling; High temperature; Polypropylene fiber; Artificial

28 neural network.

29 1. Introduction

30 Concrete materials are generally believed to behave well under fire compared to

31 the other construction materials like steel, wood, etc. This is true if no fire-induced

32 spalling occurs in concrete. Fire-induced concrete spalling describes a phenomenon

33 that concrete pieces dislodging from a concrete specimen in violent or nonviolent

34 manner at elevated temperature. It reduces concrete section, and worse still, it exposes

35 rebar embedded in concrete directly to thermal attack in the case of reinforced

36 concrete structure. Both the unfavorable results will lead to a considerable reduction

37 in bearing capacity, ultimately fire resistance, of concrete members. To overcome this

38 weakness of concrete under thermal attack, it is important to, first of all, understand

39 fire-induced concrete spalling.

40 Fire-induced concrete spalling can be categorized into three types according to

41 controlling mechanisms, i.e., thermo-hygral spalling, thermo-mechanical spalling, and

42 thermo-chemical spalling [1]. Thermo-hygral spalling is a result of vapor pressure

43 built up inside concrete. Most often, it is referred to as explosive spalling in literature.

2
44 Namely, thermo-hygral spalling of concrete occurs in an explosive manner, which is

45 different from those exhibited by thermo-mechanical spalling and thermo-chemical

46 spalling. Another characteristic of thermo-hygral spalling, that is distinct from the

47 other two types of spalling, is that thermo-hygral spalling occurs at the early stage of a

48 fire while the other two types of spalling occur in the intermediate and later stage of a

49 fire. For thermo-chemical spalling, it is also likely to occur after a fire. Considering

50 the level of potential harm to fire resistance of concrete members, thermo-hygral

51 spalling is the most threatening among all the three types of spalling. Furthermore,

52 ejection of spalled debris at the early stage of a fire could injure evacuees and

53 firefighters. Therefore, it is very important to mitigate thermo-hygral spalling of

54 concrete. For ease of understanding, explosive spalling will be used instead of

55 thermo-hygral spalling in the rest of this paper.

56 Fortunately, PP fibers have been found to be effective in preventing explosive

57 spalling of concrete for a long time [2-5]. Addition of PP fibers can reduce vapor

58 pressure inside concrete, thus mitigate explosive spalling of concrete [6]. But how PP

59 fibers work to reduce vapor pressure in concrete is still a subject of intense debate.

60 Understanding the mechanism of PP fibers in reducing vapor pressure is important for

61 modelling and predicting explosive spalling of PP fiber reinforced concrete. Currently,

62 four main theories are proposed to illuminate the mechanism of PP fibers in

63 mitigating explosive spalling as summarized in Table 1. Explicit modelling effect of

3
64 PP fibers on explosive spalling tendency of concrete following the four theories is

65 difficult, as it is difficult to model the interfacial transition zones, pressure-induced

66 tangential spaces, and micro-cracks around PP fibers. Tran, et al. [7] extended an

67 existing finite element model to consider explicitly effects of PP fibers on explosive

68 spalling tendency in heated concrete. Only a rough judgment can be made from this

69 model: if the PP fiber content in concrete is much smaller than the threshold content

70 determined by their model, then explosive spalling will occur in heated concrete;

71 conversely, if the PP fiber content in concrete is much larger than the threshold

72 content, then explosive spalling will not occur in heated concrete. Other researchers

73 [8-10] tried to predict thermo-hygral behavior of PP fiber reinforced concrete by

74 considering the effect of PP fibers implicitly. This is based on the fact that PP fibers

75 do increase hot permeability of concrete despite the mechanism is unclear. So their

76 numerical models [8-10] took account of the effect of PP fibers by considering the

77 change in the concrete permeability. However, limited experimental studies were

78 conducted to measure permeability of PP fiber-reinforced concrete [11-15]. These

79 permeability tests [11-15] were conducted at either residual state or isothermal state.

80 But what the numerical models need is actually the permeability at transient heating

81 state. Moreover, the measured permeability values using different test methods can

82 vary significantly even for the same concrete mix. So traditional numerical methods

83 based on physical theories are still far from being applied to predict explosive spalling

84 of concrete with high confidence. While we should not give up the traditional
4
 85 numerical methods, it is also very meaningful to find alternative methods to predict

86 thermal explosive spalling of concrete.

87 Past decade has witnessed the successful applications of artificial neural network

88 method in a wide range of research topics on concrete. The topics include

89 compressive strength, elastic modulus, fracture energy, surface scaling resistance, and

90 alkali-silica-reaction-induced expansion of concrete [16-22]. Furthermore, one

91 important advantage of ANN is that it is good at solving complex nonlinear problems

92 of which whose mechanism is unclear. Explosive spalling of concrete containing PP

93 fibers belongs to this type of problems at the moment.

94 Explosive spalling of PP fiber reinforced concrete involves highly complex and

95 nonlinear thermo-hygral behavior and phase change of PP fibers, which is extremely

96 difficult to simulate by traditional FEM or FDM. The advantage of ANN makes it a

97 potential solution to predict explosive spalling of concrete containing PP fibers.

98 Recently, Seitllari and Naser [23] made an attempt to predict explosive spalling in

99 reinforced concrete columns via ANN method. In their ANN model, compressive

100 strength of concrete, width of RC column, loading eccentricity, and loading

101 magnitude were used as ANN input parameters. The proposed model captured the

102 tendency of RC columns to spall in fire with high precision. It is noted that the

103 applied loading on RC column was also included as one of the input parameters, so

104 thermo-mechanical spalling may be inevitably included in their prediction outcomes.

5
105 Furthermore, PP fibers, moisture content, heating rate, and size of aggregate, which

106 are important factors that could exert an influence on explosive spalling likelihood of

107 concrete, were also not considered in their model.

108 In this paper, two ANN models, ANN1 and ANN2, were developed using the

109 Python programming language to predict thermal explosive spalling of concrete

110 containing PP fibers. Fourteen and eight parameters were selected as input for ANN1

111 and ANN2, respectively. The input parameters for ANN1 and ANN 2 are summarized

112 in Table 2. A dataset of 306 test results collected from literature was used to train

113 ANN1, and a dataset of 300 test results was used to train ANN2. It is noted that the

114 number of training data for ANN2 is slightly less than that for ANN1. This is because

115 that compressive strength information of concrete is not available in some literature.

116 Twenty groups of heating tests were conducted on high performance concrete (HPC)

117 and ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) containing PP fibers to validate the

118 capability of ANN1 and ANN2 to assess explosive spalling risk of PP fiber reinforced

119 concrete. Both ANN models showed high prediction accuracy and can be used as a

120 tool for assessing explosive spalling risk of PP fiber reinforced concrete at high

121 temperature.

122 2. Artificial Neural Network (ANN)

123 Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are mathematical models, which function

124 similar to natural neural system. A basic unit of an ANN is an artificial neuron. An

6
125 ANN is comprised of a number of artificial neurons, which co-work to resolve a

126 problem. These artificial neurons are arranged in layers and the neurons in one layer

127 are connected to the neurons in adjacent layers. Typically, ANNs are composed of

128 three layers, i.e., input layer, hidden layer, and output layer, which are fully connected

129 to each other. The input layer is the first layer in ANN, which takes input data and

130 transmits it to the next layer. The next layer is named as hidden layer, which takes

131 data from the input layer and transmit it to the output layer. The output layer, i.e. the

132 last layer in ANN, outputs the desired target results. Actually, only the artificial

133 neurons in the hidden layer and output layer are operational artificial neurons, which

134 pass weighted sum from previous layer through an activation function. The

135 mathematical representation of an operational artificial neuron can be expressed in the

136 form of Eqn.(1).

n
137 Y = f (∑ wi X i + b) (1)
i =1

138 where

139 Xi is input value from previous layer,

140 wi is weight value for Xi,

141 b is bias for the neuron,

142 f is an activation function,

7
143 Y is output value.

144 The activation function of an artificial neuron plays an important role in

145 achieving complex nonlinear mapping between input and output. In the current study,

146 rectified (ReLU) activation function was used on the hidden layer and the sigmoid

147 activation function on the output layer. Fig. 1 shows a schematic representation of an

148 operational artificial neuron. Predicting whether a PP fiber reinforced concrete mix is

149 vulnerable to explosive spalling is essentially a binary classification problem.

150 Therefore, sigmoid activation function is used on the output layer, with an output of 0

151 meaning no explosive spalling and 1 meaning the opposite. A schematic

152 representation of the fully-connected feed-forward ANN used in this study is shown in

153 Fig. 2.

154 In order for an ANN to output credible results, a training process is required. The

155 training process is essentially an optimization process that finds out a set of weights

156 and biases that minimize an error function computed from output and target results. In

157 this study, Adam algorithm [24] is used as the optimization algorithm for the ANN

158 models. This algorithm is computationally efficient and suitable for non-stationary

159 problems with very noisy gradients. The binary cross-entropy between output results

160 and target results is used as the error function.

161 2.1 Input and output parameters

162 For an ANN, input parameters and output are necessary and important. The

8
163 problem to be tackled in this paper is to predict explosive spalling of PP fiber

164 reinforced concrete under thermal loading. There are two elements to be considered in

165 this problem, i.e., PP fiber reinforced concrete and thermal loading. In terms of PP

166 fiber reinforced concrete, concrete mix proportions, moisture content, specimen

167 dimension, maximum aggregate size, compressive strength, quantity and dimensions

168 of PP fibers are parameters that may significantly influence explosive spalling risk of

169 concrete. In terms of thermal loading, heating rate and maximum exposure

170 temperature are parameters that may significantly influence explosive spalling risk of

171 concrete.

172 Instead of being characterized by absolute quantities of concrete ingredients per

173 unit volume, concrete mixture is characterized by relative ratios of concrete

174 ingredients, i.e., water/binder ratio, silica fume/binder ratio, GGBS/binder ratio, fly

175 ash/binder ratio, fine aggregate/binder ratio and coarse aggregate/binder ratio. To

176 consider the influence of dimensions of concrete specimens on explosive spalling

177 resistance of concrete in ANN models, a concept of characteristic length is introduced.

178 Characteristic length is defined as the distance of shortest escape route of vapor from

179 the specimen centroid to the specimen surface. For example, the characteristic length

180 of a prism specimen is illustrated in Fig. 3. If the height of the prism is no less than its

181 side length, then its characteristic length is half of its side length, otherwise, its

182 characteristic length is half of its height.

9
183 Compressive strength is usually taken as one indicator of explosive spalling risk

184 of concrete. However, compressive strength of concrete is dependent on concrete

185 mixture and maximum aggregate size. Therefore, two ANN models were built in this

186 paper, i.e., ANN1 and ANN2. The input parameters for ANN1 are water/binder ratio,

187 silica fume/binder ratio, GGBS/binder ratio, fly ash/binder ratio, fine aggregate/binder

188 ratio, coarse aggregate/binder ratio, moisture content, characteristic length, maximum

189 aggregate size, quantity, diameter and length of PP fibers, heating rate, and maximum

190 exposure temperature. The input parameters for ANN2 are compressive strength of

191 concrete, moisture content, characteristic length, maximum aggregate size, quantity,

192 diameter and length of PP fibers, heating rate, and maximum exposure temperature.

193 The objective of the two ANN models is to predict whether the PP

194 fiber-reinforced concrete will spall explosively under thermal loading. So essentially

195 it is a binary classification problem. In this paper, the binary values of the two ANN

196 models are set to be 0 and 1. Class value 0 is interpreted as “the input PP fiber

197 reinforced concrete mix is free from explosive spalling”, and class value 1 is

198 interpreted as “the input PP fiber reinforced concrete mix is vulnerable to explosive

199 spalling”.

200 2.2 Network data preparation

201 To predict explosive spalling resistance of PP fiber reinforced concrete, ANN

202 models need to learn by training the datasets which have input and output as

10
203 prescribed in Section 2.1. Many experimental studies have been conducted to assess

204 explosive spalling resistance of concrete with and without PP fibers. However, many

205 of them did not provide complete information regarding the input parameters. In this

206 study, test results from [14, 25-49] were collected to train the presented ANN models.

207 The following rules apply to collecting the ANN input data from the literature

208 [14, 25-49]:

209 • If concrete specimens were subjected to a standard fire such as ISO 834 fire, the

210 maximum exposure temperature was taken as the temperature at 30 minutes of the fire

211 and the heating rate was taken as the linear heating rate up to the maximum exposure

212 temperature.

213 • If concrete specimens were subjected to a multi-stage heating curve, for example,

214 a two-stage heating curve as shown in Fig. 4, the heating rate was taken as the linear

215 heating rate up to the maximum exposure temperature.

216 • The moisture content of concrete is mass loss percentage of concrete after drying

217 to constant mass at 105 °C. In the case that only the mass loss of percentage concrete

218 drying at 120 °C was recorded, the moisture content of concrete was taken as 80% of

219 the mass loss percentage at 120 °C.

220 • As long as explosive spalling was observed in one of the tested concrete

221 specimens, the concrete mix was deemed to be vulnerable to explosive spalling.

11
222 Followed by these abovementioned rules, 306 samples of data were collected for

223 ANN1 and 300 samples of data were collected for ANN2. Table 3 shows the ranges of

224 input data parameters for ANN1 and ANN2 extracted from [14, 25-49]. Fig. 5 plots

225 the relationship between the fifteen input parameters of ANN1 and ANN2 and

226 spalling result in literature. Undoubtedly, if the maximum exposure temperature is

227 less than a threshold temperature, explosive spalling tends not to occur in concrete as

228 shown in Fig. 5. Currently, there is not a definite value for the threshold temperature

229 below which explosive spalling of concrete is unlikely to occur. However, according

230 to the unified fire-induced concrete spalling theory [1], explosive spalling tends to

231 occur at a material temperature in between 220 °C and 320 °C. So concrete is unlikely

232 to explode when exposed to 220 °C or a slightly higher temperature, which is

233 consistent with the observation from Fig. 5. Furthermore, no clear trends are evidently

234 visually observed regarding the essential link between each input parameter and

235 explosive spalling tendency. For example, in terms of compressive strength, it

236 indicates that the widely-held opinion “explosive spalling risk of concrete increases as

237 compressive strength of concrete increases” is arbitrary and conditional. As can be

238 seen in Fig. 5, concrete with a low compressive strength may explode under heating,

239 while concrete with a high compressive strength may not explode under heating. For

240 another example, in terms of quantity of PP fibers, concrete with more than 5 kg/m3

241 PP fibers may explode in fire, while concrete with a lower PP fiber dosage may not

242 explode in fire. Fig. 5 indicates that thermal explosive spalling in concrete is not
12
243 simply dependent on one single factor but several factors; Fig. 5 also demonstrates a

244 wide scatter of the collected data which is desirable for a proper set of training data

245 for ANN1 and ANN2.

246 2.3 Artificial neural network set-up

247 There are no existing theoretic principles for determining a proper network

248 architecture for a certain problem at the moment. So many neural network

249 architectures were established and evaluated using stratified 10-fold cross-validation

250 method. Cross-validation method evaluates an ANN model by dividing the data set

251 into a training data set and a test data set. For 10-fold cross-validation, the collected

252 data set is divided into 10 subsamples randomly. Out of the 10 subsamples, one

253 subsample is held as validation data for evaluating the performance of the model, and

254 the rest 9 subsamples are used as training data to train the model. The above process

255 repeats 10 times, with each of the 10 subsamples used as the validation data exactly

256 once. After all evaluations are complete, the 10 evaluation results are averaged to get

257 a mean evaluation result. The benefit of this method is that all samples of data are

258 used for both training and validation, and each sample of data is used exactly only

259 once for validation.

260 As the number of data is limited, so the number of layers for both ANN1 and

261 ANN2 was set to be 3, i.e., one input layer, one hidden layer, and one output layer.

262 Past experiences showed that ANNs with 3 layers performed quite well in civil

13
263 engineering problems in general. The number of neurons in the hidden layer is an

264 important parameter of an ANN model. Too few neurons in the hidden layer may

265 result in poor training performance of an ANN model, while too many neurons may

266 result in overfitting of an ANN model. Number of epochs and batch size are another

267 two important parameters of an ANN model. The number of epochs is defined as the

268 number of passes through the entire training data set. The batch size is defined as the

269 number of data samples processed before updating the weights of the model.

270 To find a competent ANN model to predict explosive spalling of concrete, a set

271 of ANN models were trained and evaluated. Table 4 lists the parameters of the ANN

272 models. As shown in the table, there are four values for number of neurons, number of

273 epochs, and batch size, respectively. Relatively small values were chosen for number

274 of epochs in Table 4 was because a larger number of epochs tend to result in

275 overfitting problem. So in total, there are 43 (64) ANN models for ANN1 and ANN2,

276 respectively. All the ANN models were evaluated by 10-fold cross-validation. For

277 ANN1, the most competent model is the one that has 20 neurons in the hidden layer

278 with a batch size of 10 and training epochs of 500. For ANN2, the most competent

279 model is the one that has 30 neurons in the hidden layer with a batch size of 10 and

280 training epochs of 500.

14
281 3. Experimental Verification

282 3.1 Confirmation tests

283 To check the applicability and generality of the two ANN models (ANN1 and

284 ANN2) developed in Section 2 for predicting explosive spalling risk of PP fiber

285 reinforced concrete, an independent series of confirmation tests, covering a wide

286 range of cases, were designed and conducted.

287 3.1.1 Concrete mix proportions

288 Five concrete mixes were used in this confirmation tests, among which included

289 three PP fiber reinforced high performance concrete (HPC) mixes and two PP fiber

290 reinforced ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) mixes. The mix proportions of

291 the five concrete mixtures are given in Table 5. All the concrete ingredients in the

292 table except PP fibers are expressed as weight proportions of cement. The diameter

293 and length of the PP fibers used in these concrete mixes are 60μm and 10 mm,

294 respectively. Compressive strength tests were conducted on Φ100 mm×200 mm

295 cylinder specimens. Three cylinder specimens were tested for each concrete mix and

296 compressive strength of each concrete mix was taken as the mean value. To assess

297 explosive spalling resistance of these five concrete mixes, Φ100 mm×200 mm

298 cylinder specimens were used in heating tests.

299 3.1.2 Curing conditions

300 To investigate the influence of moisture content on explosive spalling tendency

15
301 of PP fiber reinforced concrete, specimens of each concrete mix were cured in two

302 conditions. For HPCPP1, HPCPP2, HPCPP3, UHPCPP1, and UHPCPP2, one group

303 of specimens were cured in air; the other group of specimens were cured in air first

304 and then cured in water for 3-4 weeks. Three 50.8 mm cube specimens were cast for

305 each concrete mix together with the cylinder specimens to determine moisture content

306 of concrete. These cube specimens were also divided into two groups and cured in the

307 same two conditions as the concrete cylinder specimens. The moisture content of a

308 concrete cube specimen is determined as the mass difference of the specimen before

309 and after drying to constant weight at 105 °C divided by its initial mass. The initial

310 masses of the cube specimens were recorded just before start of heating tests. The

311 moisture content of each concrete mix under each curing condition was taken as the

312 mean value of the three measured results.

313 3.1.3 Heating conditions

314 Two heating schemes were used respectively for each concrete mix under each

315 curing condition. The heating rate for the two heating schemes was 5 °C/min and

316 10 °C/min, respectively. The maximum exposure temperatures for the two heating

317 schemes were both 600 °C and it was kept constant for one hour before shutting down

318 the power.

319 3.1.4 Summary of heating tests

320 As described from Section 3.1.1 to Section 3.1.3, there were in total five PP

16
321 fiber-reinforced concrete mixes. For all the concrete mixes, there were two curing

322 conditions respectively. For each concrete mix under each curing condition, there

323 were two heating schemes. So there were in total 20 (5×2×2) cases to be investigated.

324 Table 6 presents a summary of all the 20 testing cases. Three Φ100 mm×200 mm

325 cylinder specimens were prepared for each case to take into account stochastic

326 behavior of explosive spalling.

327 3.2 Experimental results and model verification

328 The heating tests for the 20 cases as shown in

329 Table 6 were all conducted at least 3 months later. After the heating tests, photos

330 were taken to record the status of the concrete samples. Appendix I shows status of

331 concrete samples after thermal loading for the 20 cases. From the spalling test results,

332 it can be seen that all the PP fiber reinforced HPC specimens did not spall at high

333 temperature, regardless of heating rate and moisture content and all the PP fiber

334 reinforced UHPC specimens spalled into small pieces, regardless of heating rate and

335 moisture content.

336 Table 7 lists the input parameters of the 20 cases for ANN1 and ANN2. It should

337 be noted that all the parameter values of the 20 confirmation test cases are within the

338 ranges of parameter values of the collected dataset listed in Table 3. The 20 sets of

339 parameters were input into ANN1 and ANN2 to make predictions, respectively. Table

340 8 summarizes the test results and predicted results of ANN1 and ANN2 for the 20
17
341 cases regarding whether explosive spalling occurred or not. As can be seen in the

342 table, the predictions of ANN1 for the 20 cases matched perfectly with the test results.

343 ANN2 successfully predicted 18 cases out of 20 cases, which is a good result, though

344 not as good as ANN1. ANN2 failed to predict explosive spalling of UHPCPP1

345 cured at air condition under a heating rate of 5 °C/min and 10 °C/min. So concrete

346 strength-based ANN model (ANN2) could lead to unconservative predictions, which

347 is not preferable.

348 To summarize, ANN1 had a prediction accuracy of 100%, while ANN2 had a

349 prediction accuracy of 90%. Obviously, concrete mix-based ANN model (ANN1)

350 performed better in terms of predicting explosive spalling risk of PP fiber reinforced

351 concrete than strength-based ANN model (ANN2).

352 4. Discussions

353 The developed two ANN models, ANN1 and ANN2, trained on a limited number

354 of test data conducted by different researchers, achieved a prediction accuracy of

355 100% and 90%, respectively. This demonstrates that ANN method is tolerant of

356 systematic errors and random errors in the test data from a wide range of sources.

357 Furthermore, prediction performance of an ANN model is closely related to the size of

358 the training data set. The more data the ANN model learns, the better performance it

359 is supposed to exhibit.

360 It is noted that ANN2, though had a prediction accuracy of 90%, failed to predict
18
361 explosive spalling of UHPCPP1 with a moisture content of 2.8%. ANN2 is a

362 compressive strength-based ANN model. Fig. 6 shows the histograms of compressive

363 strength and moisture content of the collected data on PP fiber reinforced concrete.

364 Although the collected dataset has data samples that have a moisture content around

365 2.8%, it lacks data samples with compressive strength close to that of UHPCPP1

366 (100.1 MPa). Fig. 7 shows the combined effect of compressive strength and moisture

367 content on explosive spalling tendency of PP fiber reinforced concrete based on the

368 collected data. It is noted that the data samples near predicted data sample with a

369 compressive strength of 100.1 MPa and a moisture content of 2.8% all showed no

370 explosive spalling. This could explain why ANN2 failed to predict case 4 and case 9.

371 It is believed that as more explosive spalling evaluation tests are conducted, there will

372 still be room for ANN2 to improve its prediction performance.

373 Mugume and Horiguchi [41] proposed a simplified method to predict explosive

374 spalling of fiber reinforced concrete. The method used the relative predicted

375 maximum pressure to predict explosive spalling of fiber reinforced concrete. The

376 relative predicted maximum pressure is expressed as follows:

377 Pr , p = 0.0113 f c ' − 0.05T f − 0.01L f − 0.0021Sof − 0.001S sf (2)

378 where Pr , p is the relative predicted maximum pressure, f c ' is compressive

379 strength of concrete, T f is a constant regarding type of polymer fiber with values of

380 1 and 0.2 for PP and PVA fiber respectively, L f is length of polymer fiber, Sof is

19
381 the cumulative surface area of polymer fibers, and S sf is the cumulative surface area

382 of steel fibers.

383 If the relative predicted maximum pressure is larger than 0.183, thermal

384 explosive spalling will occur in fiber reinforced concrete. If it is not larger than 0.183,

385 thermal explosive spalling will not occur in fiber reinforced concrete. Followed by

386 this simplified method, the predictions for the 20 cases are presented in Table 9.

387 Explosive spalling was predicted to occur for all the 20 cases according to this method.

388 But the fact was that only 8 PP fiber reinforced UHPC cases showed explosive

389 spalling, all the rest 16 PP fiber reinforced HPC cases showed no explosive spalling.

390 Compared to 100% accuracy by ANN1 and 90% accuracy by ANN2, 40% accuracy

391 by the simplified method is considered to be low. The positive aspect is that the

392 simplified method did not make false predictions regarding the cases that did spall

393 under heating. Nevertheless, the simplified method is still too conservative.

394 Furthermore, the ANN models can continue to improve their prediction performance

395 as more data is available, while the simplified method cannot. So the ANN method is

396 a more promising method than traditional simplified method in terms of predicting

397 explosive spalling of PP fiber reinforced concrete.

398 5. Conclusions

399 Assessing explosive spalling risk of PP fiber reinforced concrete through

400 numerical method is a challenging topic. This study adopted artificial neural network

20
401 approach to predict explosive spalling tendency of PP fiber reinforced concrete. Two

402 ANN models, i.e., ANN1 and ANN2, were built. The difference between ANN1 and

403 ANN2 is that ANN1 is based on concrete mix proportions while ANN2 is based on

404 compressive strength of concrete. The conclusions and recommendations from this

405 study are listed as follows:

406 (a) Developed based on a limited number of test data collected from a wide range of

407 sources, both ANN models have a satisfying performance in predicting explosive

408 spalling of PP fiber reinforced concrete, with 100% accuracy for ANN1 and 90%

409 accuracy for ANN2. The good performance of the two ANN models indicates

410 the ANN models are tolerant of random errors and systematic errors in the test

411 data from different sources.

412 (b) Concrete mix-based ANN model, i.e., ANN1, performed better than concrete

413 strength-based ANN model, i.e., ANN2, in predicting explosive spalling tendency

414 of PP fiber reinforced concrete. The relatively inferior performance of ANN2 is

415 possibly due to lack of data around the predicted sample data. ANN2 is expected

416 to perform better as more diverse test data is available for training.

417 (c) ANN1 and ANN2 both have a better prediction accuracy than traditional

418 simplified method in assessing explosive spalling risk of PP fiber reinforced

419 concrete. Furthermore, ANN models still have room to improve in prediction

420 performance, while the traditional simplified method does not have. Therefore,

21
421 ANN is a more promising method to assess explosive spalling risk of PP fiber

422 reinforced concrete.

423 (d) Many previous experimental studies on assessing explosive spalling risk of

424 concrete did not record all the information regarding the necessary input

425 parameters of ANN1 and ANN2. It is recommended to record all these

426 information in the future so that the test results can be used to further improve the

427 prediction performance of the ANN models.

428

429 Acknowledgements

430 The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from the National

431 Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.51708061), and the 111 Project of

432 China (Grant No. B18062).

433

434 Reference

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575

576

26
577 Tables

578 Table 1 Different theories of PP fibers in mitigating explosive spalling

Hypotheses Description

Vacated micro-channels theory Micro-channels left by melted fibers facilitate the escape of
[50] steam.

Interfacial Transition Zones (ITZ) The ITZ between hydrophobic fibers and cement matrix
theory [8] facilitate the escape of steam.

Pressure-induced tangential space The PITS between hydrophobic fibers and cement matrix
(PITS) theory [51] facilitates the escape of steam.

The micro-cracks induced by melting of fibers facilitate the

Micro-cracks theory [52]
escape of steam.

579

580 Table 2 Input parameters for ANN1 and ANN2

Parameters for ANN1 Parameters for ANN2

Water/binder ratio Compressive strength
Silica fume/binder ratio Moisture content
Fly ash/binder ratio Heating rate
GGBS/binder ratio Maximum exposure temperature
Fine aggregate/binder ratio Characteristic length
Coarse aggregate/binder ratio Quantity of PP fiber
Maximum aggregate size Diameter of PP fiber
Moisture content Length of PP fiber
Heating rate
Maximum exposure temperature
Characteristic length
Quantity of PP fiber
Diameter of PP fiber
Length of PP fiber

581

582
27
583 Table 3 Ranges of network input parameters

Input parameters Minimum Maximum Mean Standard deviation

Water/binder ratio 0.186 0.61 0.354 0.128
Silica fume/binder ratio 0.0 0.207 0.046 0.079
Fly ash/binder ratio 0.0 0.7 0.051 0.145
GGBS/binder ratio 0.0 0.458 0.058 0.112
Fine aggregate/binder ratio 0.345 3.38 1.581 0.673
Coarse aggregate/binder ratio 0.0 3.952 1.607 1.038
Moisture content 0.0 0.073 0.027 0.020
Heating rate, °C/min 0.25 240.0 32.1 45.8
Maximum exposure temperature, °C 100.0 1200.0 601.4 252.9
Characteristic length, mm 20.0 200.0 62.1 37.7
Maximum aggregate size, mm 0.12 32.0 11.7 7.5
Quantity of PP fiber, kg/m3 0.0 14.56 0.66 1.84
Diameter of PP fiber, μm 0.0 100.0 10.4 20.0
Length of PP fiber, mm 0.0 19.0 4.0 7.2
Compressive strength, MPa 15.6 153.1 71.8 27.7

584

585 Table 4 Different sets of parameters for ANN model

Number of neurons Batch size Number of epochs

50 5 200
60 10 300
70 15 400
80 20 500

586

587

28
588 Table 5 Mix proportions of concrete with PP fibers
Mix HPCPP1 HPCPP2 HPCPP3 UHPCPP1 UHPCPP2
Cement 1 1 1 1 1
Silica fume 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.2 0.2
GGBS 0 0.36 0 0 0
Fly ash 0 0 0.36 0 0
Water 0.378 0.493 0.493 0.288 0.288
Fine aggregate (0-4 mm) 1.2 1.2 1.2 0.6 0
silica sand (120 mesh) 0 0 0 0.6 0.6
Coarse aggregate (4-10 mm) 1.5 1.5 1.5 0 0
Superplasticizer 0.014 0.013 0.012 0.049 0.049
3
PP fiber (kg/m ) 1.8 1.8 1.8 2 2
Compressive strength 88.6 85.9 83.8 100.1 116.7
at testing day (MPa)

589

590 Table 6 Summary of testing cases

Mix name Curing condition Heating rate (°C/min)

5
air
10
HPCPP1
5
wet
10
5
air
10
HPCPP2
5
wet
10
5
air
10
HPCPP3
5
wet
10
5
air
10
UHPCPP1
5
wet
10
5
air
10
UHPCPP2
5
wet
10

29
591 Table 7 Detailed information of 20 testing cases

Case w/b ca/b fa/b hr (°C/min) m D Tmax sf/b Sa G/b F/b Qf df (μm) lf (mm) fc
3
(mm) (°C) (kg/m ) (MPa)
1 0.32 1.39 1.02 5 0.029 50 600 0.152 10 0 0 1.8 60 10 88.6
2 0.32 0.974 0.779 5 0.032 50 600 0.116 10 0.234 0 1.8 60 10 85.9
3 0.32 0.974 0.779 5 0.03 50 600 0.116 10 0 0.234 1.8 60 10 83.8
4 0.24 0 1 5 0.028 50 600 0.167 4 0 0 2 60 10 100.1
5 0.24 0 0.5 5 0.024 50 600 0.167 0.12 0 0 2 60 10 116.7
6 0.32 1.39 1.02 5 0.052 50 600 0.152 10 0 0 1.8 60 10 88.6
7 0.32 0.974 0.779 5 0.055 50 600 0.116 10 0.234 0 1.8 60 10 85.9
8 0.32 0.974 0.779 5 0.057 50 600 0.116 10 0 0.234 1.8 60 10 83.8
9 0.24 0 1 5 0.049 50 600 0.167 4 0 0 2 60 10 100.1
10 0.24 0 0.5 5 0.046 50 600 0.167 0.12 0 0 2 60 10 116.7
11 0.32 1.39 1.02 10 0.029 50 600 0.152 10 0 0 1.8 60 10 88.6
12 0.32 0.974 0.779 10 0.032 50 600 0.116 10 0.234 0 1.8 60 10 85.9
13 0.32 0.974 0.779 10 0.03 50 600 0.116 10 0 0.234 1.8 60 10 83.8
14 0.24 0 1 10 0.028 50 600 0.167 4 0 0 2 60 10 100.1
15 0.24 0 0.5 10 0.024 50 600 0.167 0.12 0 0 2 60 10 116.7
16 0.32 1.39 1.02 10 0.052 50 600 0.152 10 0 0 1.8 60 10 88.6
17 0.32 0.974 0.779 10 0.055 50 600 0.116 10 0.234 0 1.8 60 10 85.9
18 0.32 0.974 0.779 10 0.057 50 600 0.116 10 0 0.234 1.8 60 10 83.8
19 0.24 0 1 10 0.049 50 600 0.167 4 0 0 2 60 10 100.1
20 0.24 0 0.5 10 0.046 50 600 0.167 0.12 0 0 2 60 10 116.7

592 Note: w/b is water/binder ratio; ca/b is coarse aggregate/binder ratio; fa/b is fine aggregate/binder ratio; hr is heating rate; m is moisture content of

30
593 concrete; D is characteristic distance of the concrete specimens; Tmax is the maximum exposure temperature that concrete specimens experience;
594 sf/b is silica fume/binder ratio; Sa is maximum size of aggregate used in concrete; G/b is GGBS/binder ratio; F/b is fly ash/binder ratio; Qf is the
595 quantity of PP fibers; df is the diameter of PP fibers; lf is the length of PP fibers; and fc is compressive strength of concrete.

31
596 Table 8 Test and predicted results on explosive spalling of PP fiber-reinforced concrete

Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4 Case 5 Case 6 Case 7

Test 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
ANN1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
ANN2 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
Case 8 Case 9 Case 10 Case 11 Case 12 Case 13 Case 14
Test 0 1 1 0 0 0 1
ANN1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1
ANN2 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Case 15 Case 16 Case 17 Case 18 Case 19 Case 20 Accuracy
Test 1 0 0 0 1 1
ANN1 1 0 0 0 1 1 100%
ANN2 1 0 0 0 1 1 90%

597 Note that 1 represents that explosive spalling occurs, while 0 represents that explosive
598 spalling does not occur.

599

600 Table 9 Predictions made by the simplified method in [41]

Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4 Case 5 Case 6 Case 7

1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Case 8 Case 9 Case 10 Case 11 Case 12 Case 13 Case 14
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Case 15 Case 16 Case 17 Case 18 Case 19 Case 20 Accuracy
1 1 1 1 1 1 40%

601

602

32
603 Figures

b
Input
X1 w1
X2 w2 Output
. Sum Activation Y1
.
. wn
Xn
604

605 Fig. 1. A basic operational artificial neuron

606

Hidden
Input layer
layer
Output
layer

607

608 Fig. 2. Architecture of a fully-connected feed-forward ANN

609

33
 a L: Characteristic length
a
a
h a
h

h≥a h<a
L=a/2 L=h/2
(a) Case 1 (b) Case 2
610

611 Fig. 3. Characteristic length of prism specimens

612

Actual heating curve

Assumed heating curve
Temperature (°C)

Tmax

Time (min)
613

614 Fig. 4. Linearization of heating rate for a two-stage heating curve

615

34
616

617 Fig. 5. The relationship between the fifteen input parameters and spalling

618 observation result in the collected data set

619

(a) Compressive strength (b) Moisture content

620 Fig. 6 Histograms of compressive strength and moisture content

621

35
622
623 Fig. 7 Correlation between compressive strength and moisture content of PP
624 fiber reinforced concrete

625

36
626

627 Appendix I PP fiber reinforced concrete samples after exposure to heating

(1) Case 1 (2) Case 2 (3) Case 3 (4) Case 4

(5) Case 5 (6) Case 6 (7) Case 7 (8) Case 8

(9) Case 9 (10) Case 10 (11) Case 11 (12) Case 12

(13) Case 13 (14) Case 14 (15) Case 15 (16) Case 16

(17) Case 17 (18) Case 18 (19) Case 19 (20) Case 20

628

37
Highlights

• Prediction of explosive spalling of PP fiber reinforced concrete using

artificial neural networks.

• Prediction performance of ANN models superior to that of traditional

analytical model.

• Enhanced prediction accuracy using concrete mix-based ANN model

instead of concrete strength-based ANN model.

Declaration of interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal
relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.