Applying Gray Relational Analysis with Gray Numbers to Qualitative Identification of the Origin of Hydraulic Cement Clinker by Trace Elements

In recent years, increased attention has been given to the identification of the origin of hydraulic cement clinker with trace element contents. Establishing a standard pattern of the trace element for each origin can facilitate this purpose. However, defining a standard pattern is difficult because each origin has various patterns in practice. Therefore, an effective supporting methodology to deal with the uncertain information is necessary. This paper integrates both concepts of gray number and gray relational analysis to develop a new gray model for qualitative identification of the origin of hydraulic cement clinker. In this proposed model, a detailed operation procedure using gray numbers is provided to effectively handle the uncertain information. Both a set of training data and a set of testing sample are adopted to demonstrate the feasibility and practicability of the proposed model. Results show that the proposed model can indeed efficiently identify the origin of clinker by its trace element contents.