Artificial neural networks and nonlinear regression techniques to assess the influence of slake durability cycles on the prediction of uniaxial compressive strength and modulus of elasticity for carbonate rocks

TLDR

Rock material characterization is complex and often requires intelligent numerical approaches. This study examines how slake durability index cycles affect uniaxial compressive strength and modulus of elasticity predictions using ANN and regression techniques. The authors built a dataset from carbonate rock tests (UCS, E, Schmidt hammer, porosity, density, p‑wave velocity, slake durability index) and trained ANN and nonlinear regression models, introducing new performance indices PI and Cd. Four‑cycle slake durability index yields the most accurate predictions, with ANN outperforming regression models, and the PI and Cd indices effectively assess model accuracy. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

SUMMARY Understanding rock material characterizations and solving relevant problems are quite difficult tasks because of their complex behavior, which sometimes cannot be identified without intelligent, numerical, and analytical approaches. Because of that, some prediction techniques, like artificial neural networks (ANN) and nonlinear regression techniques, can be utilized to solve those problems. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the cycling integer of slake durability index test on intact rock behavior and estimate some rock properties, such as uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) and modulus of elasticity (E) from known rock index parameters using ANN and various regression techniques. Further, new performance index (PI) and degree of consistency (Cd) are introduced to examine the accuracy of generated models. For these purposes, intact rock dataset is established by performing rock tests including uniaxial compressive strength, modulus of elasticity, Schmidt hammer, effective porosity, dry unit weight, p‐wave velocity, and slake durability index tests on selected carbonate rocks. Afterward, the models are developed using ANN and nonlinear regression techniques. The concluding remark given is that four‐cycle slake durability index (I d4 ) provides more accurate results to evaluate material characterization of carbonate rocks, and it is one of the reliable input variables to estimate UCS and E of carbonate rocks; introduced performance indices, both PI and Cd, may be accepted as good indicators to assess the accuracy of the complex models, and further, the ANN models have more prediction capability than the regression techniques to estimate relevant rock properties. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.