Prediction Models for Evaluating the Strength of Cemented Paste Backfill: A Comparative Study

Cemented paste backfill (CPB) is widely used in underground mining, and attracts more attention these years as it can reduce mining waste and avoid environmental pollution. Normally, to evaluate the functionality of CPB, the compressive strength (UCS) is necessary work, which is also time and money consuming. To address this issue, seven machine learning models were applied and evaluated in this study, in order to predict the UCS of CPB. In the laboratory, a series of tests were performed, and the dataset was constructed considering five key influencing variables, such as the tailings to cement ratio, curing time, solids to cement ratio, fine sand percentage and cement types. The results show that different variables have various effects on the strength of CPB. The optimum models for predicting the UCS of CPB are a support vector machine (SVM), decision tree (DT), random forest (RF) and back-propagation neural network (BPNN), which means that these models can be directly applied for UCS prediction in future work. Furthermore, the intelligent model reveals that the tailings to cement ratio has the most important influence on the strength of CPB. This research can boost CPB application in the field, and guide the artificial intelligence application in future mining.