Relationship between the mechanical properties and the surface roughness of marble

Because dimension stone is a natural building material, polishing is important, especially when deciding how the stone will be used. However, the effects of stone polishing are not fully understood. In the stone industry, determining the best polishing process is often performed by trial and error or is based on an expert's experiences. This paper reports the result of a study conducted using selected true marble specimens to determine their surface roughness values and to relate these values to their grain sizes, uniaxial compressive strengths, tensile strengths, and Bohme abrasion values. For this purpose, five different true marble specimens were selected. The significance and validity of the relationships between the mechanical properties and the final surface roughness values were interpreted using test statistics. It was found that there were statistically significant correlations between uniaxial compressive strength and tensile strength and the surface roughness of the studied marble specimens. It is not clearly known whether the Mime abrasion loss value has any relationship with the surface roughness of the polished marble or not. It is thought that the present findings could help practitioners and consumers as well as architects and engineers to make more informed choices about the type of marble to use for specific applications.