On 27–29 August 2025, the Eighteenth International Conference on Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering Computing was held in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy. The conference is one of the leading international forums dedicated to advanced computational methods in civil and structural engineering.
As part of the conference, the special session AI-S9: Machine Learning in Material Characterization and Non-Destructive Evaluation of Building Materials was organized and chaired by Dr. Sławomir Czarnecki (Faculty of Civil Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland), together with Prof. Fabio De Angelis. The session was conducted within the framework of the Im4StEM project.
The special session focused on the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for the prediction, evaluation, and characterization of building materials, with particular emphasis on compressive strength and non-destructive testing (NDT) methods. Topics included artificial neural networks, interpretable tree-based models, hybrid AI–NDT approaches, experimental validation, and the explainability and reliability of ML models in material science.
A total of five presentations were delivered during the session. The Im4StEM project team contributed two presentations, delivered by Angela del Robledo Troncoso García and Dr. Sławomir Czarnecki, and published two peer-reviewed conference papers:
- Concrete mixture compressive strength estimation using interpretable tree-based machine learning models
- A machine learning approach for predicting the compressive strength of masonry walls: an artificial neural network model
The organization of the special session and active participation in the conference significantly contributed to the dissemination of the Im4StEM project results, strengthening international collaboration and fostering the integration of material science with modern computational intelligence tools.
