The stochastic assessment of strength and deformability characteristics for a pyroclastic rock mass

A practical procedure is described for implementing probabilistic determination of rock mass strength and deformability properties of a pyroclastic rock medium. In order to carry out this procedure, the discontinuity properties of rock mass are collected in the field and laboratory studies are conducted on the intact rock samples. The appropriate statistical distributions are fitted on the available data by using the chi-square goodness of fit technique. For the estimation of strength and deformability of rock mass, input parameters of the generalized Hoek–Brown empirical equations are replaced by previously defined probability density functions. After running Monte Carlo simulations, potential ranges of the strength and deformability values of the investigated rock mass are accomplished. The simulation results suggest that it is promising to represent the random characters of rock mass mechanical properties when used with proper empirical or analytical relationships.