Prediction of Punching Shear Capacity of RC Slabs using Support Vector Machine

In recent years, FRP composites have been widely used due to the high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios, high durability potential, and light weight. Also when there is a possibility of steel bars corrosion, the FRP reinforcing bars are good alternative for reinforced concrete slabs. So far, many experimental equations have been presented to estimate the shear capacity of concrete slabs but, in many problems, data mining was more accurate than experimental equations. The support vector machine is one of the methods of data mining. In this article, nonlinear support vector machine regression was used to evaluate the shear behavior of concrete slabs reinforced with FRP. The data used in this study, which included 74 concrete slab samples, was obtained from articles published in this field. The punching shear strength was calculated by using the ACI 318, BS 8110 and ACI 440 building codes and the existing formulas, were compared with those of the proposed model. The model has the coefficient correlation of 0.995 and coefficient of dispersion of 0.08. Finally comparing the model with corresponding statistical indicators of experimental equations, it can be declared that the proposed model has a good level of precision.