Modulus of Elasticity for Grain-Supported Carbonates—Determination and Estimation for Preliminary Engineering Purposes.

Featured Application: Modulus of elasticity for grain-supported carbonate rocks is successfully estimated by using simple estimation models. The methodology and models described in this paper can help engineers in the early design stages when they need a quick and easy estimate. The determination and estimation of elastic behaviour are essential in engineering practise, especially in quarrying, mining, construction, and all engineering professions that perform operations dealing with rock materials. Young's modulus, or modulus of elasticity, is the most important property describing the deformability of rock material. In this paper, grain-supported carbonates from Croatia are described and their elastic modulus and significant physical and mechanical properties are determined. The analysis of the collected data was performed in the R statistical environment. Estimation models based on multiple linear regression and the regression tree model were created. The methodology of model development and evaluation in R environment is described in detail. According to the more stringent coefficients (RMSECV and adjusted R²) used to evaluate the success of the estimation, simple regression tree models were found to perform well for the preliminary estimation, while more complex models based on Bagging performed very well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]