Developing of non-linear weight functions for mix design optimization of cementitious systems

Mix design in production cementitious materials is of importance where selection the value of each parameter has a critical effect on final properties of the material. In the present work, a new method has been developed to determine the effect of each considered mix design factor on the output properties. A specific property can be related linearly to the factors of mix design through normalized nonlinear weight functions. The proposed procedure was applied on two different mix designs available in the literature. The first analysis was conducted on ordinary Portland cement based concrete specimens to analyse the importance of each factor on their compressive strength. The second one was conducted on a geopolymeric system to analyse the compressive strength. For both systems, the factors were divided into sensitive and non-sensitive where sensitive factors were suggested to be considered with more attention in mix design procedure.