Evaluation of the Mechanical Properties of Normal Concrete Containing Nano-MgO under Freeze–Thaw Conditions by Evolutionary Intelligence

In this research, different amounts of nano-MgO were added to normal concrete samples, and the effect of these particles on the durability of the samples under freeze and thaw conditions was investigated. The compressive and tensile strength as well as the permeability of concrete containing nanoparticles were measured and compared to those of plain samples (without nanoparticles). The age of concrete samples, percentage of nanoparticles, and water-to-binder ratio are the variables of the current research. Based on the results, the addition of 1% nano-MgO to the normal concrete with a water-to-binder ratio of 0.44 can reduce the permeability up to 63% and improve the compressive and tensile strengths by 9.12% and 10.6%, respectively. Gene Expression Programming (GEP) is applied, and three formulations are derived for the prediction of mechanical properties of concrete containing nano-MgO. In this method, 80% of the dataset is used randomly for the training process and 20% is utilized for testing the formulation. The results obtained by GEP showed acceptable accuracy.