Performance Evaluation of Neural Networks in Concrete Condition Assessment

A neural network modeling approach is used to identify concrete specimens that contain internal cracks. Different types of neural nets are used and their performance is evaluated. Correct classification of the signals received from a cracked specimen could be achieved with an accuracy of 75 percent for the test set and 95 percent for the training set. These recognition rates lead to the correct classification of all the individual test specimens. Although some neural net architectures may show high performance with a particular training data set, their results might be inconsistent. In situations in which the number of data sets is small, consistent performance of a neural network may be achieved by shuffling the training and testing data sets.