Quality in the construction industry: An application of DOE with goal programming

The strength of any concrete structure depends on the components of the concrete and their proportion in the mixture. To get the required workability, a chemical known as a plasticiser is added to the concrete mixture. A study was conducted to identify an optimum quantity of water and plasticiser in a concrete mixture for getting optimum strength and workability. An experiment was planned and conducted by varying the quantity of water and plasticiser in the mixture, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was performed on the data to identify the significant factors. Since the ANOVA result was giving contradicting levels for strength and workability, the problem was modelled as a non-linear constrained optimisation problem and optimum solutions were identified.