Lithological Control on the Estimation of Uniaxial Compressive Strength by the P-Wave Velocity Using Supervised and Unsupervised Learning

Uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) is the most fundamental physico–mechanical parameter used for any rock mass classification in geotechnical and geological engineering. However, determining UCS is a very tough, expensive, time consuming and destructive method and requires experienced workers. On the other hand, P-wave velocity (V(P)) determination is cheap, precise, non-destructive and easy. There are many established relationships between UCS and V(P) but mostly are low in range or proposed for multiple rock types of different origin. In this paper, the correlation of UCS with V(P) has been assessed based on the rocks' lithology. The methodology used in this analysis was centred on the previous studies database, lithology-based data disintegration and data integration to establish lithology based simple regression (SR) equations. A total of 37 previous studies databases were processed, and 12 characteristic regression equations have been determined based on the lithology. The lithological control was also determined using the principal component analysis (PCA), which categorised the data into diverse rock types. Artificial neural network (ANN) has been used as a robust predictive tool to estimate the UCS using the V(P) and rock type information.