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Cement type, Concrete mix proportions, Concrete behavior, Modeling, Artificial Neural Network

The Local Egyptian practice in producing concrete for different structural applications is based on the known properties of cement. Cement has been produced locally under the Egyptian standards ES 372, 373 and 584 for ordinary, rapid hardening and sulphate resisting types. In 2007, the Egyptian standards issued ES 4756 that adopted the European standard EN 197 for producing cement. This resulted in new types of cements to replace the types that local construction companies used to apply for decades. Many doubts appeared about whether the rules applied for concrete mix proportioning are still valid. In the current research, an experimental investigation of concrete properties is made using two of the locally most common types of cements CEM I 32.5 R & CEM I 42.5 N. Slump, compressive strength, rebound number and ultrasonic pulse velocities were investigated for 64 mixes. The main parameters were type of cement, cement content, water content, and fine/coarse aggregate ratio. Data base was established for the mix proportions and corresponding properties. Analytic formulae are proposed for utilizing the collected data base for concrete mix design. Also, using the experimental data base presented in the current study, numerical approach, using one of the artificial intelligence techniques, is adopted to simulate the concrete behavior for different mix proportions. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique is developed in the present work to simulate the concrete slump and concrete compressive strength for different mix proportions at different ages for the two types of cement and then predict the concrete behavior for different mix proportions at ages rather than those investigated in the experimental work.