Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443

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Resources, Conservation & Recycling

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec

Full length article

Fuzzy-metaheuristic ensembles for predicting the compressive strength of

brick aggregate concrete
Wafaa Mohamed Shaban a, b, f, Jian Yang b, c, *, Khalid Elbaz a, d, **, Jianhe Xie e, Lijuan Li e
a
MOE Key Laboratory of Intelligence Manufacturing Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering, Shantou University,
Guangdong 515063, China
b
School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
c
School of Civil Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
d
Department of Civil Engineering, Higher Future Institute of Engineering and Technology, El Mansoura, Egypt
e
School of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, Guangdong, China
f
Departement of Civil Engineeing, Misr Higher Institute of Engineering and Technology, El Mansoura, Egypt

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Several million tons of demolition and construction (D&C) wastes are being produced worldwide. Brick waste is
Brick aggregate concrete one of the eminent D&C wastes and several models have been performed on recycling brick waste to produce
ANFIS environmentally friendly concrete. This study develops three fuzzy-metaheuristic ensembles, based on adaptive
Compressive strength
neurofuzzy inference system (ANFIS) with a fuzzy c-mean clustering approach to forecasting the compressive
Fuzzy-metaheuristic ensembles
Sensitivity analysis
strength of brick aggregate concrete (BAC). Such models incorporate ANFIS with particle swarm optimization
(PSO), genetic algorithm (GA), and firefly algorithm (FFA). For the model development, 132 datasets were used
for standalone and hybrid models. All models were trained and tested with 80% and 20% of the datasets,
respectively. A k-fold cross-validation method has been applied to validate the generalization accuracy of the
established models. A sensitivity analysis is also used for evaluating the influence of each input variable on the
proposed techniques. Among the different designed and trained models, the results revealed that the hybrid
ensemble models are more successful than ANFIS based fuzzy c-mean clustering approach in forecasting the 28-
days compressive strength of BAC. The developed ANFIS-PSO model yields better prediction compared with the
other two hybrid GA and FFA models so the correlation coefficient (R2), a root means square error (RMSE), and
the mean absolute error (MAE) were acquired as 0.913, 0.057, and 0.032, respectively. A sensitivity analysis
indicated that the content of cement and the specific gravity of brick aggregates played a significant role in the
model output.

1. Introduction researching an economic and environmental technique to handle the

Rapid urbanization certainly results in an enormous construction of
new buildings together with the demolition of the old building. In China,
approximately 1.8 billion tons of demolition and construction (D&C)
wastes were produced in 2017, and as such, it is considered the largest
producer of D&C wastes in the world (Ma et al., 2019). A huge deal of
brick waste has been produced, approximately 0.4 billion tons of the
total amount of D&C wastes are produced annually during the different
D&C activities (Fig. 1). The D&C wastes disposal or landfills inevitably
generates some environmental impacts (Shaban et al., 2019a). Thus,
disposal of such wastes has become a significant feature for developing a
sustainable environment (Liang et al., 2019; Shaban et al., 2021; Sha­
ban et al., 2019b). It has been proposed that the brick waste could be
recycled to substitute the natural aggregate (NA) in concrete (Li et al.,
2016; Yang et al., 2020). The utilization of recycled brick not only helps
in decreasing the landfill problem, but it is also economically useful
furthermore being eco-friendly. Previous studies (Bazaz and Khayati,
2012; Dang et al., 2018; Jankovic et al., 2010; Wong et al., 2018; Yang
et al., 2011) indicate that the recycled brick aggregate can be utilized to
replace the coarse and fine NA in mortar and concrete. However, the

* Corresponding author at: School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
** Corresponding authors at: MOE Key Laboratory of Intelligence Manufacturing Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of
Engineering, Shantou University, Guangdong 515063, China
E-mail addresses: j.yang.1@sjtu.edu.cn (J. Yang), khalid@stu.edu.cn (K. Elbaz).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105443
Received 4 August 2020; Received in revised form 9 November 2020; Accepted 16 January 2021
Available online 23 February 2021
0921-3449/© 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.
W.M. Shaban et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443

Fig. 1. Brick waste produced during D&C activities.

Fig. 2. Graphical methodology for the developed models.

2
W.M. Shaban et al.
Fig. 3. Schematic of ANFIS architecture.
higher water absorption and porous structure of brick aggregate (BA)
cause inferior workability for fresh concrete and badly affect the several
properties of the resultant concrete. The lack of knowledge about the
behavior of brick aggregate concrete (BAC) and the limited available
standards are also considered other issues that hinder the use of BA in
concrete. Although, Cachim (2009) observed that the BA replacement
level of up to 20% had no noticeable bad impact on the splitting tensile
and compressive strengths of concrete. Yang et al. (2011) indicated that
the flexural strength was not affected by a 50% substitution percentage
of coarse BA. Adamson et al. (2015) revealed that the chloride pene­
trability resistance of BAC reduced with increasing the content of BA.
Results agreed with Yang et al. (2011) that detected the clear durability
reduction of BAC by increasing the content of BA in concrete. This
inconsistent behavior of BAC is due to the different physical properties
of BA and the proportion of concrete mix (Yang et al., 2020). It is
necessary to realize the relation between the proportions of concrete mix
and the mechanical properties of BAC. Accordingly, the application of
artificial intelligent (AI) techniques has been rising steadily for the
development of predicting the concrete behavior to encourage the large
scale using of recycled brick aggregate in concrete and thus adopt its use
in the construction industry.
Recently, AI techniques such as regression, neural network (ANN),
random forecast (RF), and adaptive neurofuzzy inference system
(ANFIS) have been approved due to their high precision in predicting the
various properties of different concrete kinds through finding a corre­
lation between parameters (Khademi et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2019;
Gao et al. 2020; Cai et al., 2020; Lyu et al., 2020; Shariati et al., 2020a).
Among the existing AI models, ANFIS gives a more reasonable estima­
tion for the compressive strength of concrete (Khademi et al., 2015).
Tesfamariam and Najjaran (2007) proposed a neuro-fuzzy model to
forecast the mixture design of normal concrete. Bilgehan and Turgut
(2010) conducted a comparative study for determining the concrete
compressive strength using ANN and ANFIS models. Nehdi and Bassuoni
(2009) used a fuzzy logic method to predict the durability of concrete.
Sadrmomtazi et al. (2013) determined the compressive strength of
lightweight concrete through ANFIS. Khademi et al. (2016) summarized
that the ANFIS model can be utilized in the optimization of the mix
design of recycled aggregate concrete and the case of higher precision
requirements. Despite the significant performance presented by ANN
and ANFIS models, the influence of the clustering approach on the
metaheuristic models is not clearly investigated. Hence, there is a ne­
cessity for predominant optimization algorithms to avoid the limitation
3
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443
of the standalone models such as local minima and poor generalization.
The metaheuristic optimizations, e.g., particle swarm optimization
(PSO), firefly algorithm (FFA), and genetic algorithm (GA) are consid­
ered as a powerful population-based approach which capable to resolve
the disconnected and improve the generalization performance of arti­
ficial techniques (Elbaz et al., 2019; Shariati et al., 2020b; , Elbaz et al.,
2019, 2020a,b; Nguyen et al., 2019). Furthermore, the seeking for an
optimization method is vital to fulfilling the best design with minimum
objective function by varying the design parameters whereas satisfying
design constraints. To avoid uncertainties and imprecisions that exist in
traditional models, different optimization models are more convenient.
To date, there are no existing models considering the fuzzy clustering
approach to forecast the compressive strength of BAC based on
ANFIS-GA, ANFIS-FFA, and ANFIS-PSO models.
This study aims to propose three fuzzy-metaheuristic ensembles,
based on GA, PSO, and FFA to forecast the compressive strength of BAC
through the amount of concrete component and the properties of BA. For
this purpose, comprehensive data were collected during laboratory ex­
periments of the previous studies to use in compressive strength pre­
dictive model development. For evaluating the performance of the
developed algorithms and dataset accuracy, a k-fold cross-validation
approach was utilized. Based on the statistical error analyses, the per­
formance of the developed models was validated and compared with
those from the ANFIS model. Finally, to assess the significance and
weight of each parameter to forecast the compressive strength, a
sensitivity analysis was performed.
The remainder of the present study is structured as follows: the used
mathematical tools are discussed in Section 2. Section 3 introduces the
development and implementation of the utilized AI models. The data
collection and the input parameters used in this study for forecasting the
28-days compressive strength of the BAC are explained in Section 4.
Section 5 shows the results of the developed models and the perfor­
mance of the models, while Section 6 concludes this study.
2. Methodology
In order to forecast the compressive strength of BAC, the accom­
plishments performed in the present study are illustrated in Fig. 2. The
total process is classified into four main parts; (i) the collection of data
samples and thus, determining the input parameters and the corre­
sponding output (ii) the determination of the AI method, (iii) the opti­
mized metaheuristic ensemble models, and (iv) the evaluation process
W.M. Shaban et al.
and sensitivity analysis. Three metaheuristic algorithms, namely GA,
PSO, and FFA are integrated with the ANFIS model to ameliorate its
computational parameters in this study.
2.1. ANFIS based fuzzy c-mean clustering
ANFIS is primarily favorable in the different engineering fields
(Vakhshouri et al., 2018). To fulfill the best effective technique, the
number, and type of membership functions, and optimization methods
(hybrid, backpropagation, etc.) need to be adapted in the ANFIS method.
The ANFIS structure model is displayed in Fig. 3. The applied data in this
model are collected to create a fuzzy logic system among the output and
input variables. ANFIS comprises the human-like logic style of fuzzy
approach over using a linguistic approach and fuzzy sets including a set
of if-then fuzzy bases. To clarify the ANFIS procedures, we considered
two variables x, y and one output f. In each layer, the node function is
defined as follows (Jang et al., 1997).
Layer 1 has fuzzy membership functions with output function to
represent each node as follow:
O1,k = μak (x)for k = 1, 2
O1,k = μbk (y)for k = 1, 2
where: x or y represents the node input, ak or bk is the linguistic label, μ
(x) or μ (y) is the membership function.
Layer 2: Each node estimates the firing strength for every fuzzy base
through multiplying the received signals for serving as output signal.
O2,k = Wk = μak (x).μbk (y)k = 1, 2
Layer 3: Each node computes the ratio of the firing strength of kth
base to the firing strengths sum for all bases.
wk
O3,k = wk = k = 1, 2
w1 + w2
Layer 4 utilizes the nodal function for calculating the influence of kth
base towards model output using:
O4,k = wk . fk k = 1, 2
where: f1 and f2 denote fuzzy if-then bases as:
Base 1: if x is a1 and y is b1 then, f1 = p1 x + q1 y + r1
Base 2: if x is a2 and y is b2 then, f2 = p2 x + q2 y + r2 where: {pk , qk ,
rk } are the subsequent variables sets.
Layer 5: A single non-adaptive node represents the circle node that
calculates the overall output as the all input signals summation:
∑ ∑
wk fk
O5,k = overall output = wk fk = ∑k
k wk
i
ANFIS model utilizes a single ensemble learning approach applying
the gradient descent and least-square approaches to restart the vari­
ables. The gradient descent approach is utilized to adopt the premise
variables {ak , bk , ck } and the least-square approach is employed for
identifying the consequent variables{pk , qk , rk }. Two major stages are
required to complete the training procedure: (i) the least-square
approach is utilized to detect the consequent parameters, whereas the
preceding parameters (MFs) are supposed to be fixed for the current
cycle during the learning stage; (ii) the errors are liberated backward. A
gradient descent approach is utilized to reset the premise variables by
decreasing the overall quadratic fitness function, but the consequent
parameters keep fixed (Jang, 1993).
In order to apply this model, some clustering approaches can be
utilized as a learning system. Fuzzy c-mean clustering (FCM) is a
powerful algorithm that specifies to cluster overlapped database. The
degree of a database belongs to a cluster is defined using a membership.
This membership displays a high rate of the dataset close to the cluster
center and a low rate for the data element far away from the cluster
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443
center. Utilizing FCM, a dataset X can be distributed into clusters C by
decreasing the errors according to the weighted distance of each point Xi
to all centroids of the clusters C. Then, the algorithm minimizes the
fitness function (Taherdangkoo and Bagheri, 2013).
1
μsv = ( )m−2 1 (7)
∑c
k=1
dsv
dkv
where: dsv=||cs-xv|| represents the Euclidean distance among the cluster
center sth and the data set vth; µsv is the membership matrix coefficients;
m is the fuzziness index; C is the overall clusters numbers. The fitness
function could be estimated as follows:
∑
c ∑
c ∑
n
J(U, c1 , …, c2 ) = Js = . μmsv dsv2 (8)
s=1 s=1 v=1
After initializing the center vectors in the FCM algorithm, a novel C
fuzzy clustering center Cs (s =1, 2, …, C) can be estimated as follows:
∑n m
μ xv
cs = ∑svn sv m (9)
(1) μ
v=1 sv
The training algorithm continues repeatedly until convergence is
(2)
achieved.
2.2. Genetic Algorithm (GA)
Genetic algorithm is a stochastic search technique defined from
(3) Darwin’s concept of biological development theory. GA is used to
optimize the control system variables that are hard to track via con­
ventional algorithms (Jalalkamali, 2015). The process of GA frequently
adapts the population of the individual solutions through generations,
by haphazardly choosing the individuals from the recent generation as
(4)
parents to reproduction the children for the subsequent generation, until
reaching the optimal fitness. In every generation, a novel approximating
set is generated to choose the effective value based on the level of fitness
and production by operators from the normal genetic population. These
(5) procedures lead to the development of members that have been adaptive
to the environment than the initial members. GA includes three key
steps; initialization, operating GA, and evaluation, as clarified below:
lowerRoman(%1) Initialization: this process haphazardly creates a
population of n chromosomes and assesses the effi­
ciency of every chromosome through the fitness
function.
lowerRoman(%1) Operating GA:
(6) (a) Selection: this operator selects the best two chromo­
somes as parents from the population according to its
fitness value. The combination of Tournament and
Elitist (i.e., selection methods) are applied in this
study. By this combination, a few of the individuals
are directly passed to the next generation as elite
solutions and the other individuals compete with
each other.
(b) Crossover: this operator exchanges the two selected
parents to produce offspring (i.e., new child) for the
next generation. If the crossing does not occur, the
child will be the same as the two selected parents. In
this study, the developed GA model utilizes the
scattered method in which a random chromosome
with binary values is produced first; after that, the
gens occupied by 1 are chosen from the first parent
and the others are chosen from the second one.
(c) Mutation: this operator changes randomly the infor­
mation contained in the chromosomes. Through
mutation, one individual can dominate the
4
W.M. Shaban et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443

population diversity and enhance the search capacity

to prevent converging the algorithm to local minima.
lowerRoman(%1) Evaluation: in this process, the objective function
frequently represented a scaled form of the objective
function in which how is each individual fits in the
optimization problem.

2.3. Particle swarm optimization (PSO)

PSO algorithm is inspired by the biological communities’ perfor­

mance such as a swarm of birds is looking for the best solution in a
specific space. This algorithm was initially supposed by Kennedy and
Eberhart (1995). Generally, it initializes a population of particles
randomly spreading in the space and updates the generations in order to
find the optimum solution. Every particle in the space is identified by its
position and velocity according to the two best fitness values, namely;
pbest and gbest. In each generation, the pbest and gbest values are
utilized for updating the velocity and position of every particle till
reached the optimal solution. The process of updating the particles are
described as follows: Fig. 4. An imaginary view for the relationships of firefly technique with lo­
Supposing the position xki = (xki1 , xki2 , …, xkin ) and the velocity vki = cations x, distance r, brightness I(r), and attractiveness ß(r) (Louzazni
(vi1 , vki2 , …, vkin ) of the particle ith for the iteration kth, the particle opti­
k et al. 2018).
mizes its location in the iteration (t + 1)th as follows:
( ) ( )
vk+1
i = ω.vki + c1 .r1 . pki − xik + c2 .r2 . gk − xki with − vmax ≤ vk+1
i ≤ vmax
(10)
( )
xk+1
i = xki + vt+1
i (11)

where: pki is the best location of the particle ith for the iteration kth, gk is
the global best location; r1 and r2 represent randomly values ranging
from [0, 1]; ω refers to the inertia weight; c1 and c2 represent the
accelerating rate and social coefficient, respectively.

2.4. Firefly algorithm (FFA)

Firefly algorithm represents a metaheuristic optimization technique

inspired by the social performance of fireflies (Yang, 2010). The FFA
depends on the ideal performance of flashing features during searching
for food. In nature, each firefly is transported randomly, and a firefly
that has a better bait emits than light and entices others. In fact, the
space among two fireflies has an inverse relationship with the absorp­
tion rate and speed. To simplify, three necessary basics for the structure
Fig. 5. Flowchart of the k-fold cross-validation (Jiang and Chen, 2016).
of real fireflies are described as follows:

(i) Fireflies are supposed to be unisex and thus, every firefly has the I = I0 e− γd2
(12)
capacity for attracting another.
(ii) Attractiveness is proportional to their lusters and the brighter w(d) = w0 e− γd2
(13)
fireflies that have a higher brightness absorb the lower fireflies.
While the firefly moves randomly when the brightness of the where: w(d) and I denote the attraction at space d from the firefly and
fireflies is comparable. the intensity of light, respectively. W0 and I0 refer to attraction at space
(iii) Firefly brightness is influenced by the scenery of the specified d = 0 from the firefly and the intensity of light, respectively. γ refers to
target function. the light absorption coefficient. The distance d among any two fireflies i
and j are stated using the Euclidean equation and expressed below:
Based on the basics of the FFA algorithm, the fitness function is √̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
described by the firefly brightness and the intensity of the light released ∑ s
( )
rij = ‖ xi + xj ‖ = xis − xjs (14)
from the firefly. The intensity and attractiveness are illustrated in Eqs. k=1
12 and 13, respectively. Every firefly owns its classic attraction (ß)
which shows to what extent it attracts other swarm members (Yang, where: xi and xj represent the fireflies location i and j in the Cartesian
2010). Every firefly has its ß that states how robust it attracts other coordinate approach. As previously noted, firefly is involved by another
members in a swarm.

5
W.M. Shaban et al.
Fig. 6. Flowchart of the fuzzy-metaheuristic models.
and vice-versa. Therefore, the performance of firefly i towards j can be
observed in formula 15 (Yang, 2010).
2( )
Δxi = β0 e− γd xj − xi + αεi (15)
2
where: αεi is a random term and β0 e− γd (xj − xi ) represents the attraction
expression, α and εi are the coefficient of randomization and the random
vector quantity observed from Gaussian distribution, respectively. α =
[0, 1]. According to the previous formula, the next move of a firefly is its
position at i + Δxi . The performance of the firefly algorithm is indicated
in Fig. 4. More details related to the procedures of FFA can be found in
Majumder et al. (2016).
2.5. k-fold cross-validation
To validate the robustness of the developed models, many validation
approaches have been widely utilized such as substitution model,
repeated random, k-fold cross-validation, and holdout model, etc.
Among the above-mentioned approaches, the probability of k-fold cross-
validation (K-FCV) is considered the most popular approach (Zhou et al.
2016). The K-FCV approach can divide the data randomly into K subsets.
K-1 subsets are employed as training datasets while the remaining
dataset is the testing set. The distichiasis of the K-FCV technique is that
in every round, the training sets and testing sets are independent.
Therefore, the performance is effective, establishing a solid foundation
for model accuracy. The procedure repeats k times, and the model
performance is assessed by the mean prediction error of k subsets, as
indicated in the following formula. The flow chart of the k-fold
cross-validation is displayed in Fig. 5.
6
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443
1∑ n
Fitness = RMSE (16)
k i=1
3. Optimization models
3.1. Developing soft computing techniques
Each input in ANFIS generally includes several membership func­
tions (MFs) and each MF becomes a maximum somewhere. Overall,
there are no specific formulas to forecast the type and number of MFS
(Elbaz et al. 2019; 2020a). Therefore, the MFs were calculated by the
trial and error assumption. In order to increase the accuracy of ANFIS
and optimize the position of MFs through the training process, the
metaheuristic optimizations namely; GA, PSO, and FFA are used. In the
beginning, all the datasets including the input parameters and the cor­
responding output are arranged for the K-FCV stage. Next, the ANFIS is
formed with all the parameters that are randomly initialized. Simulta­
neously, the ANFIS model uses the FCM clustering technique to optimize
the result and form the fuzzy inference system (FIS). After that, the
premise parameters {ai , bi , ci } and the consequent parameters {pi , qi , ri }
are updated by using GA, PSO, and FFA. For the ANFIS-GA algorithm,
the population is initialized and the GA operators are (i.e., selection,
crossover, mutation) configured to define the parameters and rules of
the ANFIS model. Then, the algorithm uses the least-squares and the
backpropagation techniques for training the FIS and match the designed
data. After that, the fitness function is evaluated, if the optimum criteria
have not been attained, the GA operators are applied to define the new
W.M. Shaban et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443

Table 1 Table 2
Main parameters and assumptions of the developed models. Descriptive statistics of the generated database.
Parameters Characteristic/Value Parameter Unit Minimum Maximum Mean Standard
specification ANFIS ANFIS-GA ANFIS-PSO ANFIS-FFA deviation

MF type Gaussian Gaussian Gaussian Gaussian Cement (c) kg/ 250.0 437.0 359.01 27.08
Inputs/Output 10/1 10/1 10/1 10/1 Water (w) m3 122.50 220.0 177.73 21.25
Fuzzy structure Takagi- Takagi- Takagi- Takagi- Water to cement kg/ 0.35 0.70 0.495 0.051
Sugeno Sugeno Sugeno Sugeno ratio (w/c) m3 764.0 1119 862.35 55.11
Output MF Linear Linear Linear Linear Coarse brick - 509.0 922.0 748.76 69.80
Minimum 1 × 10− 5 1 × 10− 5 1 × 10− 5 1 × 10− 5 aggregate (CBA) kg/ 1886.0 2220.0 1970.11 61.90
improvement Fine aggregate m3 0.063 0.116 0.090 0.013
Number of fuzzy rules 10 10 10 10 (FA) kg/ 1.70 2.50 2.19 0.142
Number of epochs 200 200 200 200 Total solid m3 9.03 29.11 16.35 3.82
Initial step size 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 materials (TM) kg/ 26.13 76.88 43.61 7.35
Step size decrease 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 Water to total m3 14.0 34.0 24.761 4.511
rate solid materials -
Step size increase rate 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 ratio (w/TM) -
No. of training 106 106 106 106 Specific gravity of %
dataset CBA (SG) %
No. of testing dataset 26 26 26 26 Water absorption MPa
Maximum iteration 300 300 300 of CBA (WA)
number Abrasion
Crossover rate 0.8 resistance of CBA
Mutation rate 0.02 (AR)
Cognitive 1 28-days
acceleration (c1) compressive
Social acceleration 2 strength of BAC
(c2) (fcu)
Epochs number 100 100 100
Light absorption 1.2
coefficient (γ) √̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
Attraction coefficient 2 ∑n ( )2
i=n xmea − xpre
base (ß0) RMSE = (17)
Movement coefficient 0.3 n
(α)
∑n ⃒⃒ ⃒
⃒
i=n xmea − xpre
MAE = (18)
n
population. The flow chart of the established technique is presented in
Fig. 6. For the ANFIS-PSO algorithm, the ANFIS parameters are extrac­ ∑n (
xmea − xpre
)2
ted to estimate the dimensions for each particle in the PSO. Once the R2 = 1 − ∑n
i=n
(19)
i=n (xmea − xm )2
parameters of ANFIS are stated, the initial population is produced. After
initializing all the particles in the PSO, the PSO algorithm renews the
where: n, xmea, xpre, and xm, are the total number of data, the measured
position and velocity of every particle in the space, until convergence is
values, the predicted values, and the mean of the x values, respectively.
achieved. The optimized model is evaluated and the number of pop­
Theoretically, the predicted model with high precision is achieved when
ulations is developed by using a series of trial and error calculation as­
the RMSE and MAE are equal to 0 and the R2 is equal to 1. For the hybrid
sumptions. The fitness function is estimated and the best parameters are
models in this study, the purpose of the optimization process is to
optimized consequently for the ANFIS parameters. In other words, FFA
research the best design parameters to minimize the RMSE and MAE and
is utilized to determine the optimum ANFIS parameters. In the
maximize the R2 simultaneously.
ANFIS-FFA scheme, the first iteration is initiated by generating a
random of an initial firefly population, and therefore, every firefly is
3.3. Sensitivity analysis
assigned to the ANFIS set(s). Fireflies’ attractiveness is calculated ac­
cording to the light intensity of fireflies. Thus, the attractiveness of the
The main benefit of the sensitivity analysis is to study the impact of
fireflies is collectively compared, and a firefly that yields the maximum
input features on the output for the proposed hybrid techniques.
brightness is chosen, and the other fireflies are naturally drawn towards
Therefore, a sensitivity analysis is adapted to calculate the magnitude of
this firefly. In the hybrid models, the root mean square error of k-fold
connection weights for studying the relative impact of every input var­
cross-validation sets represents the fitness function and it used for
iable on the output based on the proposed approach by Milne (1995), as
evaluating the performance of the model. The training process continues
shown in Eq. 20 below.
until we either reach an acceptable value from the fitness function or the
∑nhid wji
maximum number of iterations is achieved (see Fig. 6). Specifications of j=1
∑ninp × woj
|wjl |
the main parameters and assumptions of the developed models are SA = ( ⃒l=1 ⃒) (20)
∑ninp ∑nhid ⃒⃒ wjk ⃒
summarized in Table 1. k=1 j=1 ⃒
∑ ninp × w ⃒
oj ⃒
|wjl |
l=1

3.2. Performance evaluation criteria

To assess the hybrid developed models to forecast the compressive
strength, various statistical index were performed. Root means square
error (RMSE), correlation coefficient (R2), and mean absolute error
(MAE) were utilized for evaluating the models’ performance, according
to the following statistical parameters:
where: SA refers to the significance of input parameters; ninp is the inputs
number; nhid represents the hidden unit number; w represents the
connection weight; j is the unit of input; o is the unit of output.
3.4. Data collection
In the present study, 10 input parameters were used for forecasting
the compressive strength of BAC by utilizing different hybrid tech­
niques. These parameters comprise the amount of concrete components

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W.M. Shaban et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443

Table 3
Details of the data and their sources.
No. c (kg/ w (kg/ w/c CBA FA (kg/ TM (kg/ w/TM SG WA (%) AR (%) fcu (MPa) Source
m3) m3) (kg/m3) m3) m3)

64 340 187; 153 0.55; 0.45 764- 780–827 1886–2220 0.07–0.099 2.0–2.35 9.03–29.11 26.13–76.88 14–31 Uddin et al.
1056 (2014)
8 340 170 0.5 860- 690 1890–1897 0.089 2.1 17.7–21.3 2.41–2.48 22.1–27.2 Uddin et al.
867 (2017a)
52 375; 169-220 0.45;0.5;0.55 798; 618-761 1889-2009 0.08-0.11 2.3 5.1 38.3 19–34 Uddin et al.
400 953 (2017b)
1 350 200 0.57 1119 730 2199 0.09 2.2 11.5 31.6 23 Debieb and
kenai (2008)
4 322; 122.5; 0.35; 0.45 855 732; 752 1909–1957 0.06–0.08 1.7 25 46.5 18–27 Bazaz and
350 157.5 Khayati (2012)
2 250; 175 0.5; 0.7 772; 739; 922 1944; 1972 0.088; 0.09 2.04 15.5 34.7 16; 22 Aliabdo et al.
350 883 (2014)
1 437 210 0.48 944 509 1890 0.11 2.18 10.28 48.67 30 Yang et al.
(2020)

namely; cement content (c), water content (w), water-cement ratio (w/
c), coarse brick aggregate content (CBA), fine aggregate content, (FA),
total solid materials (TM), and water to total solid materials ratio (w/
TM). Furthermore, the physical and mechanical properties of BAC such
as specific gravity (SG), water absorption (WA), and abrasion resistance
(AR) are other parameters that affect the BAC strength significantly. The
28-days compressive strength of the BAC that contained full replace­
ment of CBA was the predicted output value. Table 2 illustrates the
statistical analyses of the laboratory datasets. A total of 132 datasets of
laboratory results derived from several experimental works were
collected to design and train the proposed models. The properties of the
utilized data and their sources are observed in Table 3. Fig. 7 shows the
graphical results for the different input parameters used in this study. As
shown, the relation between the 28- days compressive strength of BAC
and the different influencing factors is observed.
4. Results and discussion
In this study, all the datasets were normalized in the range of [0, 1]
for simplifying the modelling process based on the following Eq.
(X − Xmin )
Xn =
(Xmax − Xmin )
where: Xn, Xmin and Xmax are normalized, minimum, and maximum data
for each parameter, respectively.
The datasets were also randomly divided into two sets, i.e., 80%
datasets for model construction and 20% for testing the developed
models (Elbaz et al., 2020, 2020c). For implementing the established
models, MATLAB software was used. In K-FCV technology, the inventory
database was arbitrarily divided into k tantamount sized subdivisions.
The k− 1 subdivisions were utilized as a training dataset and the
remaining division was utilized for testing the developed models. In this
study, the datasets were randomly divided into five parts (i.e., k=5),
indicating five cross-validations, as recommended by Rohani et al.
(2018). The estimation of every fold in the 5 fold cross- validation are
displayed in Fig. 8. It can be noted that the best value of statistical
analysis appears in the cross-validation sets 4 and 5, indicating the
applicability of the proposed model.
4.1. ANFIS model
In order to apply the ANFIS with a fuzzy c-mean clustering approach,
the type and number of the MFs as well as the number of iterations
should be identified. Thus, the effect of various MFs on the performance
of the model was applied. Findings showed that the Gaussian MF type
gained preferable performance with the lowest RMSE. Moreover, the
number of MF for every input as well as the number of iterations were
selected based on the expert acquaintance and trial-errors approach (see
Table 1).
To enhance the accuracy of the ANFIS technique, four cases were
tried to assess the effect of utilizing various clusters number in the fuzzy
inference system. The four models utilize 5, 7, 10, and 13 clusters,
respectively. Table 4 illustrates the soft computing analyses from the
various structures for the training and testing datasets based on R2,
RMSE, and MAE. According to the statistical analysis for both training
and testing datasets, model No. 3, with 10 clusters indicated the best
performance among all the established models. Therefore, the archi­
tecture of this model was selected to forecast the compressive strength of
BAC.
As shown in Fig. 9, the forecasted compressive strength values are
relatively near to the laboratory experimental values and the relative
error pointers in Fig. 10 observe that the forecasted data effectively track
the experimental data with small differences in the ambit of ± 35 %.
Fig. 11 shows the relation between the measured and predicted
values estimated from the ANFIS forecasted model for the testing and
training sets. The approach revealed that the R2 = 0.928 and 0.714 for
(21)
the training and testing sets, respectively, leading to a reasonable ANFIS
model for forecasting the 28-days compressive strength of BAC.
4.2. Hybrid AI models
In order to forecast the compressive strength of BAC with high pre­
cision using hybrid AI models, a common programming language of
MATLAB 2019b was utilized. While preparing the prediction network,
three metaheuristic optimizations including GA, PSO, and FFA were
combined with the classical ANFIS model. In this process, the main role
of the population-based algorithm is to reduce the drawbacks of the
classical ANFIS model and set pre-defined parameters for optimization.
In this study, the metaheuristic algorithms were applied to train the
parameters of the ANFIS model and determine its optimal values. In the
first stage of the modeling, the 10 effective parameters on the
compressive strength namely; the amount of concrete components and
the different properties of CBA were adjusted as input variables and the
compressive strength was adjusted as an output parameter. For the
ANFIS-GA model, the optimum GA parameters were adopted by trials
and error technique. Many trials were implemented to choose the most
effective values for the different parameters that are required for
training the GA model. Based on these trials, the crossover, and mutation

8
W.M. Shaban et al.
Fig. 7. Graphical description of the compressive strength influential factors in the database.
rates were set as 0.8 and 0.02, respectively. To develop the ANFIS-PSO
model, the PSO parameters were adjusted based on the parametric
studies. In this study, the PSO contributions the hybrid developed model
to own closer relations including the inputs and outputs of the model.
Therefore, the developed model can determine more precise results for
the nonlinear problems and thus enhance the compressive strength
carefulness. The initial inertia weight (ωmin), damping inertia weight
(ωdamp), acceleration rate (C1), and social coefficient (C2) are the key
parameters of PSO. To evaluate the optimum values of the PSO algo­
rithm, trails and error method was applied. As a result, ωmin, ωdamp, C1,
and C2, were set as 0.5, 0.99, 1, and 2, respectively. As is evident, the
process of optimization took into account the presence of various swarm
sizes varying between 50 and 250 within 300 iterations. As observed in
9
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443
Fig. 12, the ANFIS-PSO model reached its optimum function after about
180 iterations, after which it settled at a steady level. This behavior
indicates that the algorithm achieved the best performance and the
search process can be finished. To develop the ANFIS-FFA model, several
trials are conducted for selecting the parameter values that are required
for FFA. As a result of these attempts, the ANFIS-FFA with population
size = 100 and the maximum number of iteration = 300 yielded the best
optimization. Moreover, the user-defined of the FFA model containing
light absorption coefficient (γ), attraction coefficient base (ß0), move­
ment coefficient (α) are considered, as shown in Table 1.
To give a visual sense for this developed model, Fig. 13 has been
indicated to display the correlation among the experimental and fore­
casted compressive strength for all datasets. In addition, the relative
W.M. Shaban et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443

error of predicted outputs for three fuzzy-metaheuristic ensembles

Fig. 8. The results of 5-fold cross validation.
models is displayed against the compressive strength experimental data,
as shown in Fig. 14. The relative error of the developed model is largely
concentrated around zero deviation line, which illustrates the good
agreement between actual compressive strength values recorded from
the experimental tests and model outputs. As indicated in Figs. 14 a, c
the predicted data from ANFIS with GA and FFA models can effectively
track the experimental data with a small difference in the range of ±
30%. The lowest deviations of the datasets are commonly in the range of
± 10% (Fig. 14b), indicating the precise prediction of the ANFIS-PSO
model than the other two models.
To assess the predicted models of the error performance formula
used, it remains difficult to suggest the most appropriate approximation
model according to the acquired testing and training networks (Qiao
et al. 2020). Hence, in this study, we will use the computed error values
by making a relation between the experimental and predicted values for
BAC, as observed in Fig. 15. This figure displays the comparison among
the experimental and forecasting values estimated from ANFIS-GA,
ANFIS-PSO, and ANFIS-FFA techniques for both training and testing
sets. It can be concluded that the forecasting values of the compressive
strength are less dispersed and close to the experimental values showed
by its closeness to the dashed line (the equality line). Also, a good cor­
relation can be indicated in the training and testing datasets.
To conclude the best compressive strength predictive model and give

Table 4
Statistical analysis of different ANFIS models.
No. Number of clusters R2 RMSE MAE
Training data Testing data Training data Testing data Training data Testing data

1 5 0.914 0.706 0.099 0.161 0.095 0.147

2 7 0.924 0.711 0.083 0.150 0.060 0.112
3 10 0.928 0.714 0.086 0.141 0.058 0.106
4 13 0.928 0.712 0.088 0.149 0.061 0.113

Fig. 9. Relation among experimental and forecasting compressive strength values for all datasets in ANFIS model.

Fig. 10. Relative error plot of ANFIS model.

10
W.M. Shaban et al.
Fig. 11. Relation among the measured and predicted compressive strength values from ANFIS technique: (a) training set; (b) testing set.
Fig. 12. Convergence behavior of PSO utilized to train ANFIS model.
further clarifications, the efficiency of forecasting for the implemented
methods is summarized in Fig. 16 using three statistical metrics, namely
RMSE, MAE, and R2. The analyses for the optimal models of ANFIS-GA,
ANFIS-PSO, and ANFIS-FFA were observed (see Fig. 16). Based on the
testing and training data results, the ANFIS-PSO model provides better
forecasting accuracy than ANFIS-GA and ANFIS-FFA techniques.
Consequently, the precision of the prediction model contributes to the
ability of recognizing the compressive strength of BAC pattern.
On the other hand, the estimated time of the developed models is
displayed in Fig. 17. In a glance, for all population sizes, the executed
ANFIS-PSO took the lowest time (nearly 360 s). Furthermore, the GA
and FFA based neural networks that utilized the same involvement (i.e.,
population size), took about 410 and 520 s, respectively. Therefore, the
ANFIS-PSO model can be selected as it has performed well in estimating
the compressive strength of the BAC in convenient time. These findings
are agreed with (Moayedi et al., 2019a, b; Wang et al., 2020) that
clarified the importance of the estimated time by applying different
artificial models.
Based on the discussion observed in other works (e.g., Bui et al. 2019;
Moayedi et al. 2017) the hybrid metaheuristic models can give more
reliable predictions than standalone models. For instance, Qiao et al.
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443
(2020) integrated the multi-layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network
technique with five metaheuristic computational algorithms, which
indicated that the hybrid MLP models could provide an acceptable
prediction than the conventional MLP. According to (Moayedi et al.
2019c), the applicability of the metaheuristic technique such as ant lion
optimization introduced a more promising solution for fine-tuning the
artificial neural network in the domain of concrete prediction. Eventu­
ally, the findings of the optimized models in this study agreed with the
above-mentioned studies.
4.3. Sensitivity analysis
The input parameters include information on the estimated output.
Usually, increasing the number of parameters illustrates more infor­
mation and a preferable forecasting model. However, such parameters
probably inadequate or excessive causing noise and fooling for the al­
gorithm. The relative effect performance for every input variable on the
output is determined based on the amount of link weights. Fig. 18 shows
the influence of each input variable on the forecasting model. Findings
showed that the content of cement and the specific gravity of CBA were
closely related to the forecast of the compressive strength with average
values of 11.3, and 11.1, respectively. Also, the other concrete compo­
nents have an acceptable contribution to the forecasting of the
compressive strength of BAC. Eventually, the input parameters had a
somewhat similar effect on forecasting the compressive strength, as
observed in Fig. 18.
5. Conclusions
This study presents an attempt to provide a new way for forecasting
the compressive strength of brick aggregate concrete. In this regard,
three fuzzy-metaheuristic optimization algorithms are developed to
predict the compressive strength of BAC through the amount of concrete
components and the properties of BA. Five-fold cross-validations were
conducted as the validation technology and the optimal performance of
the learning algorithms was observed. Major conclusions are observed
as follow:
1 The developed ANFIS-PSO model can forecast the compressive
strength of BAC in a satisfactory range with the laboratory values for
both testing and training datasets. This model showed a better
forecasting precision than the ANFIS-GA, ANFIS-FFA, and ANFIS
models based on their statistical analyses. The R2, RMSE, MAE were
W.M. Shaban et al.
Fig. 13. Comparison between measured and predicted compressive strength for all datasets: (a) ANFIS-GA; (b) ANFIS-PSO; (c) ANFIS-FFA models.
0.913, 0.057, and 0.032 in the testing stage and 0.955, 0.044, and
0.029 in the training stage, respectively, indicating more reliability
of the ANFIS-PSO model.
2 The relative error of the hybrid ANFIS-PSO model had an acceptable
ambit of ±10%, while the ANFIS-GA, ANFIS-FFA, and ANFIS models
indicated a relatively large error ambit of ±15%, ±30%, and ±35%,
respectively.
3 To assess the effect of every input variable on the model output, a
sensitivity analysis was conducted. The sensitivity analysis indicated
that the cement content and the specific gravity of brick aggregate
significantly influence the compressive strength of BAC.
4 In practical applications, the integrated ANFIS based fuzzy c-mean
clustering model with PSO, GA, and FFA algorithms can use the
selected ten factors as inputs for forecasting the compressive strength
of BAC in the primary stage of design with acceptable accuracy. The
predicted results in the present study can assist the efforts towards
decreasing the D&C wastes problem and supporting efficient con­
struction management.
12
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Wafaa Mohamed Shaban: Conceptualization, Methodology, Soft­
ware, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original
draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Project administration.
Jian Yang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Resources,
Supervision. Khalid Elbaz: Methodology, Software, Validation, Inves­
tigation, Writing - review & editing, Project administration. Jianhe Xie:
Funding acquisition. Lijuan Li: Funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
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.
W.M. Shaban et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443

Fig. 14. Relative error: (a) ANFIS-GA; (b) ANFIS-PSO; (c) ANFIS-FFA models.

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W.M. Shaban et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443

Fig. 15. Relation between the experimental and predicted compressive strength values: (a) ANFIS-GA; (b) ANFIS-PSO; (c) ANFIS-FFA.

14
W.M. Shaban et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 169 (2021) 105443

Fig. 16. Comparison of performance indices for ANFIS-GA, ANFIS-PSO, and ANFIS-FFA: (a) training set and (b) testing set.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the supports from Science and
Technology Program of Guangzhou, China [Grant No. 201704030057].

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