PREDICTION OF ULTIMATE SHEAR STRENGTH OF REINFORCED-CONCRETE DEEP BEAMS USING NEURAL NETWORKS. DISCUSSION AND CLOSURE

Discussion of an earlier paper with the aforementioned title by A. Sanad and M.P. Saka, published in this journal (Volume 127, Number 7, July 2001), is presented. The discussers commend the authors for applying backpropagation neural networks (BPNNs) for prediction of shear strength of reinforced concrete deep beams. The discussers suggest that in lieu of the BPN, the sequential learning NN be employed, thus avoiding finding NN architecture by the number of hidden layers and neurons. The discussers also observe that the authors omitted many of the NN modeling details and request further clarification. Closure from the authors on these recommendations and observations is provided.