Decision Support Model for Design of High-Performance Concrete Mixtures Using Two-Phase AHP-TOPSIS Approach

Abstract

Concrete mix design is the science to obtain concrete proportions of cement, water, and aggregate, based on the particular concrete design method and their mix design parameters. However, the suitability of concrete proportion for high-performance concrete depends on resulting mix factors, namely, water, cement, fine aggregate, and coarse aggregate ratios. This paper implements the multicriteria decision-making techniques (MCDM) for ranking concrete mix factors and representative mix design methods. The study presents a framework to identify critical mix factors found from the concrete mix design methods for high-performance concrete using the two-phase AHP and TOPSIS approach. Three methods of concrete mix design, namely, American Concrete Institute (ACI) mix design method, Department of Energy (DOE) method, and Fineness Modulus (FM) method, are considered for ranking mix design methods and the resulting mix factors. Three hierarchy levels, having three criteria and seven subcriteria, and three alternatives are considered. The present research is attempted to provide MCDM framework to rank the concrete mix guidelines for any given environment such as concrete under sulphate and chloride attack and for evolving the performance-based concrete mix design techniques. Sensitivity and validation analysis is also provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.