Investigating Relationships between Engineering Properties of Various Rock Types

Abstract

 In the literature on rock mechanics several authors have proposed different constants and empirical equations for the physical and mechanical properties of various rock types. This is because researchers usually base their results on the limited number of test samples and/or lithological units. The research presented here has been primarily performed to solve this variation problem. It makes sense to have a general expression for all types of rocks. To accomplish this, a considerable amount of data comprising 4,991 datasets was collected through an extensive literature review. The results were statistically analyzed to determine the range, mean, standard deviation for each investigated rock property. The physical and mechanical properties of the rocks were also plotted against each other in order to estimate one property from the other. The correlation coefficients and best-fit equations were determined by the least squares curve fit method. Usually good correlations were found between index tests, and physico-mechanical properties. At the end, various regression equations are proposed particularly applicable to the whole rock types.