The research explores the predictive capacity of the shear strength of reinforced concrete walls with different cross-sectional shapes using the XGBoost model

Structurally, the lateral load-bearing capacity mainly depends on reinforced concrete (RC) walls. Determination of flexural strength and shear strength is mandatory when designing reinforced concrete walls. Typically, these strengths are determined through theoretical formulas and verified experimentally. However, theoretical formulas often have large errors and testing is costly and time-consuming. Therefore, this study exploits machine learning techniques, specifically the hybrid XGBoost model combined with optimization algorithms, to predict the shear strength of RC walls based on model training from available experimental results. The study used the largest database of RC walls to date, consisting of 1057 samples with various cross-sectional shapes. Bayesian optimization (BO) algorithms, including BO—Gaussian Process, BO—Random Forest, and Random Search methods, were used to refine the XGBoost model architecture. The results show that Gaussian Process emerged as the most efficient solution compared to other optimization algorithms, providing the lowest Mean Square Error and achieving a prediction R2 of 0.998 for the training set, 0.972 for the validation set and 0.984 for the test set, while BO—Random Forest and Random Search performed as well on the training and test sets as Gaussian Process but significantly worse on the validation set, specifically R2 on the validation set of BO—Random Forest and Random Search were 0.970 and 0.969 respectively over the entire dataset including all cross-sectional shapes of the RC wall. SHAP (Shapley Additive Explanations) technique was used to clarify the predictive ability of the model and the importance of input variables. Furthermore, the performance of the model was validated through comparative analysis with benchmark models and current standards. Notably, the coefficient of variation (COV %) of the XGBoost model is 13.27%, while traditional models often have COV % exceeding 50%.