Accurate prediction of fresh concrete slumps is a complex non-linear problem that depends on several parameters including time, temperature, and shear history. It is also affected by the mixture design and various concrete ingredients. This study investigates the efficiency of three novel integrative approaches for predicting this parameter. To this end, the vortex search algorithm (VSA), multi-verse optimizer (MVO), and shuffled complex evolution (SCE) are used to optimize the configuration of multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural network. The optimal complexity of each model was appraised via sensitivity analysis. Various statistical metrics revealed that the accuracy of the MLP was increased after coupling it with the above metaheuristic algorithms. Based on the obtained results, the prediction error of the MLP was decreased by up to 17%, 10%, and 33% after applying the VSA, MVO, and SCE, respectively. Moreover, the SCE emerged as the fastest optimizer. Accordingly, the novel explicit formulation of the SCE-MLP was introduced as a capable model for the practical estimation of fresh concrete slump, which can assist in project planning and management.
