Extreme learning machine to foretell the deflection in plain cement, steel-reinforced, and bamboo-reinforced concrete beams

In mountainous regions, bamboo has gained popularity as a local reinforcement material for concrete due to its availability and cost-effectiveness. However, the lack of standardized design guidelines complicates the assessment of deflection behavior under varying loads. Challenges such as bond failure, shrinkage, corrosion, and material strength uncertainties further limit its structural application. To address these issues, this study employs an extreme learning machine to predict deflection in plain cement concrete beams, steel-reinforced cement concrete beams, and bamboo-reinforced concrete beams. The performance of extreme learning machine is compared with support vector regression and artificial neural networks. A total of 122 specimens were analyzed using input features such as cement content, water-cement ratio, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate, tensile strength, concrete compressive strength, percentage of reinforcement, applied load, cross-sectional area, and clear cover. The extreme learning machine method demonstrated satisfactory performance with a coefficient of deformation of 0.9975, Mean Square Error of 0.0003, Mean Absolute Error of 0.0052, Mean Absolute Percentage Error of 0.0998, and Root Mean Square Error of 0.01694. These results suggest that extreme learning machine is an efficient machine learning algorithm for predicting the deflection behavior of different reinforced concrete beams, providing a reliable alternative to traditional methods.