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Experimental Study and Soft Computing Modeling of the Unconfined Compressive Strength of Limestone Rocks Considering Dry and Saturation Conditions

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Abstract

Unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of intact limestone rocks is very significant in geotechnical engineering in order to design structures that are currently being built on/in these rocks safely and economically. Obtaining core samples and testing them in laboratory according to the available standards is very expensive and time consuming. Therefore, developing novel models to predict the UCS of limestone rocks using physical properties and non-destructive tests is crucially needed. Hence, the research in this paper has been conducted to address this aim. 104 samples of intact limestone rocks have been collected from two provinces in north of Iraq (Sulaymaniyah and Mosul). The UCS, Schmidt hammer rebound number, ultrasonic pulse velocity, dry density, saturated density, and porosity have been obtained for these samples. One-dimensional regression analysis and advanced evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR-MOGA) analysis have been conducted using the obtained results. It was found that the EPR-MOGA analysis showed improved prediction performance and generally the prediction accuracy increases as the number of the variables increases. The models developed using EPR-MOGA have been compared to a simple regression equation proposed in the literature for north of Iraq limestone rocks, where it was found that the new models outperform the available correlation. The proposed models could be of significant help to practitioners when the compression testing machine is not available or when it is difficult to obtain intact samples with the appropriate length to diameter ratio. The proposed models could also serve as a tool to do independent quality control check of UCS laboratory results.

Highlights

  • Limestone rock samples have been collected from different location in north of Iraq.

  • Dry and saturated limestone rock samples have been tested in the laboratory.

  • Nondestructive and unconfined compressive strength tests have been conducted on the samples.

  • UCS cannot be accuracy estimate using one-dimensional regression analysis.

  • Novel models have been developed to predict the UCS from non-destructive tests using EPR-MOGA.

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Availability of data and materials

Data used in this research are available upon request.

Code availability

Code used in this research is available upon request.

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Funding

No funding was received for conducting this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Roads and Transport Engineering, University of Al-Qadisiyah, Al-Qadisiyah, Iraq

    Saif Alzabeebee

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Sulaimani, Sulaimani, Kurdistan Region, Iraq

    Diyari Abdalrahman Mohammed & Younis Mustafa Alshkane

Authors
  1. Saif Alzabeebee
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  2. Diyari Abdalrahman Mohammed
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  3. Younis Mustafa Alshkane
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Contributions

SA: conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, writing—original draft. DAM: data, experimental testing, methodology, writing—review and editing. YMA: methodology, Writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Saif Alzabeebee.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

See Tables 11 and 12.

Table 11 Results of the tests on dry rock samples
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Table 12 Results of the tests on saturated rock samples
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Alzabeebee, S., Mohammed, D.A. & Alshkane, Y.M. Experimental Study and Soft Computing Modeling of the Unconfined Compressive Strength of Limestone Rocks Considering Dry and Saturation Conditions. Rock Mech Rock Eng 55, 5535–5554 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-022-02948-y

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