Partial Inverse Design of High-Performance Concrete Using Cooperative Neural Networks for Constraint-Aware Mix Generation
This addresses the challenge of constraint-aware mix design for concrete engineers, offering an incremental improvement over existing data-driven methods.
The study tackled the problem of inverse design for high-performance concrete mix compositions under constraints, proposing a cooperative neural network framework that achieved R-squared values of 0.87-0.92 and reduced mean squared error by 50-70% compared to baselines.
High-performance concrete offers exceptional strength and durability but requires complex mix designs involving many interdependent variables and practical constraints. While data-driven methods have advanced predictive modeling for forward design, inverse design, which focuses on determining mix compositions that achieve target performance, remains limited, particularly in design situations where some mix variables are fixed by constraints and only the remaining variables must be determined. This study proposes a cooperative neural network framework for the partial inverse design of high-performance concrete. The framework combines two coupled neural network models, an imputation model that infers the undetermined variables and a surrogate model that predicts compressive strength. Through cooperative learning, the model generates valid and performance-consistent mix designs in a single forward pass while accommodating different constraint combinations without retraining. Its performance is compared with both probabilistic and generative approaches, including Bayesian inference based on a Gaussian process surrogate and autoencoder-based models. Evaluated on a benchmark dataset, the proposed model achieves stable and higher R-squared values of 0.87-0.92 and reduces mean squared error by an average of 50 percent compared with autoencoder baselines and by an average of 70 percent compared with Bayesian inference. The results demonstrate that the cooperative neural network provides an accurate, robust, and computationally efficient foundation for constraint-aware, data-driven mix proportioning in concrete engineering.