Estimating the unconfined compressive strength of carbonate rocks using gene expression programming

Conventionally, many researchers have used both regression and black box techniques to estimate the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of different rocks. The advantage of the regression approach is that it can be used to render a functional relationship between the predictive rock indices and its UCS. The advantage of the black box techniques is in rendering more accurate predictions. Gene expression programming (GEP) is proposed, in this study, as a robust mathematical alternative for predicting the UCS of Iran’s carbonate rocks. The two parameters of total porosity and P-wave speed were selected as predictive indices. The proposed GEP model had the advantage of the both traditionally used approaches by proposing a mathematical model, similar to a regression, while keeping the prediction errors as low as the black box methods. The GEP outperformed both artificial neural networks and support vector machines in terms of yielding more accurate estimates of UCS. Both the porosity and the P-wave velocity were sufficient predictive indices for estimating the UCS of the carbonate rocks in this study. Nearly, 95% of the observed variation in the UCS values was explained by these two parameters (i.e., R =95%).