Modeling the compressive strength of high-strength concrete: An extreme learning approach

•Extreme learning machine (ELM) was used to predict the compressive strength of High strength concrete.•The developed ELM model is compared with BP model.•The ELM model has good prediction accuracy and fast learning speed.•The results show the potential use of ELM for predicting the compressive strength. Compressive strength is a major and significant mechanical property of concrete which is considered as one of the important parameters in many design codes and standards. Early and accurate estimation of it can save in time and cost. In this study, extreme learning machine (ELM) was used to predict the compressive strength of high-strength concrete (HSC). ELM is a relatively new method for training artificial neural networks (ANN), showing good generalization performance and fast learning speed in many regression applications. ELM model was developed using 324 data records obtained from laboratory experiments. The compressive strength was modeled as a function of five input variables: water, cement, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate, and superplasticizer. The performance of the developed ELM model was compared with that of ANN model trained by using back propagation (BP) algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed ELM model has a strong potential for predicting the compressive strength of HSC.