International Conference on Trends and Recent Advances in Civil Engineering – TRACE 2016

Optimum Design of Isolated RCC Footing using Soft

Computing Technique
1 2 3 4
Bindusara T.S. , Keerthi Gowda B.S. , Easwara Prasad G.L. and Velmurugan R.
1
PG scholar Dept. of Structural Engineering, Centre for PG Studies, VTU, Mysuru, Karnataka,
India; Email: bindusara.civil@gmail.com
2
Assistant professor, Dept. of Structural Engineering, Centre for PG Studies, VTU, Mysuru,
Karnataka, India; Email: keerthiresearch@yahoo.com
3
Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, MITE (VTU), Moodabidri, Karnataka, India.
4
Professor, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology – Madras,
Chennai, Tamilnadu, India.

ABSTRACT: Manual design of isolated RCC footing is a very tedious job. It demands experienced
knowledge of reinforced cement concrete behavior under axial load and bending moment. A less
experienced (new) engineer feel complex to analyze and design the isolated RCC footing under various
types of load. Even though, check for safety against one-way shear, two-way shear, flexure failure,
bending stress and development length is another difficult task. To minimize all the above mentioned
complexity, soft computing technique like artificial neural network approach is adopted. Initially,
optimized results of different set of input parameters are generated manually! Here, column size, axial
load, safe bearing capacity of soil, characteristic compressive strength of concrete, yield strength of steel
reinforcement are used as a input parameters. And depth, breadth, length, percentage of steel
reinforcement is used as output parameters. Feed forward, supervised, single layered Artificial Neural
Network is developed to prognosticate the optimized output parameters of isolated RCC footing. Both
rectangular and square shaped footings are considered for the analysis and future prediction. All the
predicted results showed very well agreement with manual results. Hence, a new or less experienced
design engineers can successfully use the developed weighted matrix to forecast optimum design
parameters of both square and rectangular shaped isolated footings by a less effort.

INTRODUCTION

Many Engineers are struggled to get the optimum designed value of Isolated RCC footing, due to its
complex computation and tedious procedure. So considering the above difficulty facing by the
Engineers we choose to adopt Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Technique to get quick and ease
optimum design value of footing. Based on Literature Survey ANN Technic is the best tool to privies the
intermediate and future value by data driven technique. There are 6 parameters selected as input data
and 5 parameters are considered as output data for designing the footing. Here, column size, axial load,
safe bearing capacity of soil, characteristic compressive strength of concrete, yield strength of steel
reinforcement are used as a input parameters. And depth, breadth, length, percentage of steel
reinforcement is used as output parameters. The basic philosophy of ANN is that it learns by known
examples and results are stored as experienced knowledge in the form of weighted matrix. This
weighted matrix is used for future prediction for unknown examples (Gowda et al., 2013) [1]. This main
aim of this paper is to predict the optimum Depth, Length, Breadth, Area of steel reinforcement values.
The investigation carried out is arranged in the further sections. A significant number of articles have
been published in application of soft computing technique to obtain the optimum design of isolated RCC
footing. Chethan et al. (2012) [1] studied the efficient design of counter fort Retaining wall using ANN.

Proceeding Volume of International conference, 500

ISBN 978-93-86238-00-9
 Optimum Design of Isolated RCC Footing using Soft Computing Technique

They used feed forward supervised ANN model to achieve the design of counter fort Retaining wall.
This study concludes that the efficient value optioned from the conventional method and using ANN
prediction shows better agreement with less error. ANN is good soft computing technic to get the
efficient design of counter fort retaining wall in easy way. Maind and Wankar (2014) [2] studied;
working principle, training, and testing of ANN and they developed a simple neural network model with
electric circuit. They concluded that ANN model is used for predict the complicated data that are too
difficult to noticed by the human brain. The neural network working principle is like a neuron in the
brain, which comprises lot of computational or experimental element placed in the layer. Duan Zhen-
Hua etal., [3] The radical idea for developing ANN model is to train the intermediate data generated
using spreadsheet contains some input and corresponding respective output of conventional design
method. Then trained ANN model not only producing optimum value but also able to provide the
approximate results of other unknown input parameter.

METHODOLOGY

Here optimization of isolated RCC footing has been done by using self-developed excel spread sheet.
There are 6 Input parameters are considered to generate the optimized value. The varying input
parameters are column size, Axial load, SBC, Depth of footing, Grade of concrete, Grade of steel By
doing lot of iterations for each and every input parameter we developed correspondent optimized value
of output parameters. A total 7176 set of illustrate data for square footing and 16317 set of illustrate data
for rectangular footing were developed using EXCEL spreadsheet by varying the input parameter and
also calculated the corresponding output results for all set of data. These set of data are divide into 2
parts; one part is use as training data and another part is use as testing data. Then randomly select 500
different illustrative data in the data set, which is use as testing data and the remaining 6676 and 15871
set of data, which is use as training data. The obtained results are considered as dataset for prediction
process in ANN. Then use these input and corresponding output data in the ANN program for training
and testing to predict accurate results of new unknown data. ANN model for prediction of optimized
isolated RCC footing with topology 6-12-5, transformation function as Log sigmoid, Learning rate as
-5
0.5, target error goal as 10 was used to prediction process, to prognosticate the optimized isolated RCC
footing by developing well-conditioned weighted matrix. In this paper, Feed forward, supervised, single
layered Artificial Neural Network is developed to prognosticate the optimized results of isolated RCC
footing corresponding to given input results. Here, there are six variables in the input layer, twelve in the
hidden layer and five in the output layer for both square and rectangular footing. Column size in both X
and Y direction, Axial compressive load, safe bearing capacity of soil, characteristic strength of concrete
and yield strength of steel are considered as input data. Depth, length, breadth and percentage of steel in
both X and Y direction for both square and rectangular footing. These set of data are convert to third
digit number by multiplying and dividing the number and then it is use as testing and training data in
ANN model. ANN model has been developing for a particular problem and it is ready for training. Then
randomly chose the initial weight to start the process of learning or training. Table 1 shows the selected
input value for square footing used for training and testing the ANN model. Table 2 shows the selected
input value for rectangular footing used for training and testing the ANN model. The ANN model
considered in these approaches as follow:
Number of input layer =6
Number of hidden layer =12
Number of output layer =5
Learning rate =0.5

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International Conference on Trends and Recent Advances in Civil Engineering – TRACE 2016

Number of epochs =2000

Training goal =1X10-5
Maximum value =6000

Table 1. Input Parameter for Square Footing

(Cx) (Cy) (P) (SBC) (fck) (fy)

SL.No 2 2 2
Mm mm Kn kN/m N/mm N/mm

1 230 230 200 325 25 500

2 300 300 400 250 25 500
3 380 380 300 400 25 415
4 380 380 700 350 25 415
5 380 380 900 275 25 500

Table 2. Input parameter for Rectangular footing

(Cx) (Cy) (P) (SBC) (fck) (fy)

SL.No 2 2 2
Mm mm kN kN/m N/mm N/mm

1 230 300 300 125 250* 415

2 230 300 600 325 250* 415

3 230 380 900 100 200* 415

4 300 540 700 275 200* 500

5 300 380 1000 200 200* 500

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In the present study an Artificial Neural Network approach is adopted to achieve optimum design of
Isolated RCC footing. Table 2 shows the comparison between actual output results using Excel spread
sheet and predicted output results using ANN technique. FIG 1 represents the ANN convergence curve
for both rectangular and square footing during training of ANN model. FIG 2 represents that graph of
actual depth of footing v/s predicted depth of footing, the minimum and maximum depth error compare
with actual results is 1mm and 23mm respectively. The average percentage error in depth is about
1.572%. FIG 3 represents that graph of actual breadth of footing v/s predicted breadth of footing, the
minimum and maximum breadth error compare with actual results is 0.05m and 0.51m respectively. The
average percentage error in breadth is about 7.4032 %. FIG 4 represents that graph of actual length of
footing v/s predicted length footing, the minimum and maximum length error compare with actual
results is 0.06m and 0.540 m respectively. The average percentage error in length is about 6.9467 %. Fig
5 represents that graph of actual percentage of steel v/s predicted percentage of steel of footing, the
minimum and maximum percentage of steel error compare with actual results is 0 and 0.04 %
respectively. The average percentage error in steel is about 7.281%.

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 Optimum Design of Isolated RCC Footing using Soft Computing Technique

Table 3. Actual and Predicted Output Results

Actual output results using Excel Predicted output results Using ANN
(D) (B) (L) (ptx) (pty) (D) (B) (L) (ptx) (pty)
mm m M % % mm m m % %
275 1.50 1.50 0.16 0.16 279 1.40 1.40 0.16 0.16
375 1.55 1.55 0.13 0.13 375 1.61 1.61 0.14 0.14
300 1.64 1.64 0.19 0.19 297 1.53 1.53 0.19 0.19
425 1.64 1.64 0.17 0.17 427 1.78 1.78 0.17 0.17
500 1.90 1.90 0.16 0.16 521 1.98 1.98 0.12 0.12
350 1.50 1.90 0.14 0.18 353 2.01 2.44 0.16 0.22
475 1.50 1.80 0.12 0.16 471 1.63 2.01 0.13 0.16
575 2.50 4.10 0.12 0.25 571 2.36 4.04 0.14 0.28
525 1.70 2.35 0.12 0.12 539 1.65 2.41 0.12 0.12
675 2.10 2.70 0.12 0.12 652 2.05 2.79 0.11 0.12

FIG 1. ANN convergence curve for square and rectangular footing during training.

FIG 2. Graph of actual depth of footing V/s predicted depth of footing.

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International Conference on Trends and Recent Advances in Civil Engineering – TRACE 2016

FIG 3. Graph of actual breadth of footing v/s predicted breadth of footing.

FIG 4. Graph of actual length of footing v/s predicted length of footing.

FIG 5. Graph of actual percentage of steel V/s steel V/S predicted percentage of Steel.

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 Optimum Design of Isolated RCC Footing using Soft Computing Technique

CONCLUSION
In the present dissertation work, Excel spreadsheet has been developed for designing the Isolated footing
as per IS 456-2000. Further ANN model was trained and tested by using the Input data and output data
generated by Excel spread sheet. In footing, the obtained depth, breadth, length and percentage of steel
values from ANN model achieved 98.42 %, 92.59 %, 93.05% and 92.71 % accuracy, in comparison
with actual results. The obtained results showed that, in prediction process of the optimum values of
parameters of isolated RCC footing, ANN model is found to be more accurate than regression analysis.
It also helps to solve tedious/complex problems and reduces the iterative calculation task compared to
the traditional/conventional method. Therefore it can be concluded that ANN approach is better
compared to other types of soft computing technique.

REFERENCES

Keerthi Gowda B.S, V. R. Chethan, and Rao Sri Rama T.A (2012), “Optimization of Counterfort
Retaining Wall using Artificial Neural Network.”A Proceedings of National Conference on
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Maind, Sonali B and Priyanka Wankar."Research paper on basic of Artificial Neural Network."
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Duan Zhen-Hua, Shi-Cong Kou, and Chi-Sun Poon: “Prediction of compressive strength of recycled
aggregate concrete using artificial neural networks.”Construction and Building Materials 40 (2013):
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Keerthi Gowda, Easwara Prasad G.L, and R. Velmurgan. “Prediction of Tensile Properties of Untreated Coir
Reinforced Polyester Matrix Composites by ANN.” International Journal of Materials Science 9.1
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Jiang, Da Hua. “Flexural strength of square spread footing.” Journal of Structural Engineering 109.8
(1983): 1812-1819.

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