Assessment of Longitudinal Shear Strength Parameters of Composite Slab by Artificial Neural Network

Longitudinal shear strength is considered as a major constraint in the design of compositeslab and it can be assessed by expensive and time consuming experimental techniques. The objective of the present work is to provide a numerical tool to minimize hurdles in thedesign process and to reduce the dependency on expensive and time-consumingexperiments. In this article, Artificial Neural Networks model has been developed forfinding the m and k values for determination of the horizontal shear resistance. It isdemonstrated that, with proper training of the neural network using the ratio of pitch length to width of top flange and depth of profile as input values, the proposed neural network model can generate the values of m and k quite accurately. Inherently the Artificial Neural Network is computationally efficient tool and hence the developed Artificial Neural Network will be very useful in optimization procedures of the composite slab.