Determination of some engineering properties of volcanic tuff using non-destructive method

Volcanic tuffs extracted from the quarries of Bayburt province in Turkey are of three different types locally identified as white, yellow and green Bayburt stones. This study was intended to estimate the compressive strength of white, yellow and green Bayburt stones by non-destructive testing methods. For this, non-destructive tests such as the nail penetration test (NPT), Schmidt rebound hammer (SRH) test and ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) test were performed. A uniaxial compression test was also performed so as to assess the accuracy of the results obtained from the non-destructive tests. For the NPT, nails manufactured for the gun having 27 and 39 mm length were used. In total, 45 nails were nailed and average the values were taken. Also, uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) and UPV tests were performed on 30 samples in total; furthermore, a total of 60 impacts for the SRH test were performed. The relationship between the results recorded from NPT and UCS, SRH and UPV was determined by regression analysis and comparison. The relative absolute errors between the measured values and the predicted values are below 4% for SRH-NPT comparison and below 9% for UPV-NPT comparison. This method of estimating the compressive strength, by using these non-destructive experiments, was appraised as suitable.