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

• A new method was developed to evaluate mix design parameters of concrete specimens.
• Parameters of mix design can be divided as sensitive, semi-sensitive and non-sensitive.
• Control of proper mix design of specimens during experiments can be performed.

Mix design in production cementitious materials is of importance where selection value of each parameter has a critical effect on final properties of material. In the present work, a new method has been developed to determine the effect of each considered mix design factor on output properties. A specific property can be related linearly to 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 analyze the importance of each factor on their compressive strength. The second one was conducted on a geopolymeric system to analyze 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.