Modeling of the uniaxial compressive strength of some clay-bearing rocks using neural network

Uniaxial compressive strength of intact rock is significantly important for engineering geology and geotechnics, because it is an important design parameter for tunnels, rock slopes rock foundations, and it is also used as input parameter in some rock mass classification systems. This paper documents the results of laboratory experiments and numerical simulations (i.e. neural network) conducted to estimate the uniaxial compressive strength of some clay-bearing rocks selected from Turkey. Emphasis was placed on assessing the role of slake durability indices and clay contents. The input variables in developed neural network (NN) model are the origin of rocks, two/four-cycle slake durability indices and clay contents, and the output is uniaxial compressive strength. It is shown that the performance of capacities of proposed NN model is quite satisfactory. However, the NN model including four cycle slake durability index yielded slightly more precise results than that including two cycle slake durability index as input parameter. The paper also presents a comparative study on the accuracy of NN model and genetic programming (GP) in the results. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.