Similarity analysis of chloride transport behavior in fly ash concrete under different environments aiding by machine learning method

To forecast chloride transport in site by applying accelerated test results, it is necessary to investigate the similarity of chloride diffusivity under different environments. However, limited by test period and cost expenses, a large amount of tests in field and simulated environment are hard to conduct, and a limit test data will make prediction on chloride diffusivity of concrete less precise. To solve this problem, machine learning methods are explored to predict chloride transport. Based on the existing chloride concentration test data of fly ash concrete in natural and accelerated simulated environment, this paper establishes a chloride concentration predictive model based on the one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D-CNN) method at first, and verifies the stability and accuracy of the established model. Second, similarity models for concentration ratio and diffusion time ratio based on multivariate nonlinear model and based on theoretical Fick’s second law are constructed, and the model accuracy is also tested. Finally, the chloride concentration data predicted by the 1D-CNN model is applied to the constructed similarity models respectively, and the application results are compared and analyzed to determine the optimal similarity model. Results indicate that the concentration predicted by the 1D-CNN method has a strong robustness and a small prediction error. Besides, based on multivariate nonlinear model, the error of concentration predicted by the similarity models for concentration ratio and diffusion time ratio is less than 16% and 30%, respectively. Similarly, according to the theoretical model based on Fick’s second law, the error of concentration predicted by the similarity models for concentration ratio based on the time dependent chloride diffusion coefficient and time dependent peak chloride concentration is less than 21% and 36%, respectively. The similarity model for concentration ratio based on multivariate nonlinear model has the best prediction effect.