Correlations between Uniaxial Compressive Strength and Dynamic Elastic Properties for Six Rock Types

The assessment of the behavior of the ground is highly critical for any geotechnical and geological projects. Uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) is an essential mechanical parameter for any rock mass characterization, whereas the elastic properties of rocks help us understand the deformational behavior of the rocks. However, the determination of these parameters is challenging, time-consuming, destructive, and expensive and requires a skilled workforce. In contrast, the dynamic elastic properties require P-wave velocity (V-P), S-wave velocity (V-S), and density (rho) for calculation, which are easy, quick, nondestructive, and cost-effective to determine. Therefore, in this paper, to understand the behavior of different rocks, UCS has been correlated with the dynamic elastic properties, including dynamic bulk modulus (K-D), dynamic shear modulus (G(D)), dynamic Young's modulus (E-D), and dynamic Poisson's ratio (mu(D)) for carbonate, serpentinite, shale, sandstone, volcanite, and ignimbrite rocks incorporated from the databases of eight previous studies. Based on the lithology, different correlation equations have been proposed to predict the UCS from dynamic elastic properties using simple regression (SR) analysis. From SR analysis, it was observed that the coefficient of correlation (R) values depended on the type of rock. The R-values for the overall rocks, including all six rock types, for different correlations, were observed to be inferior to the R-values obtained on the basis of lithology. The principal component analysis (PCA) reduced the dimension of the data sets, and the trendline obtained for each rock type was observed to be dependent on the lithology. Moreover, descriptive statistics were also used to validate the lithological control for six different rock types. (c) 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.