Comparative study of the deformation modulus of rock masses—a reply to the comments received from Gokceoglu (2018)

Abstract

Availability of information on the deformation modulus in the initial stages of civil engineering projects related to near-surface or underground excavation is very important for design purposes. However, direct determination of the deformation modulus is a challenging task and a potentially costly one; therefore, several researchers have frequently used indirect methods to assess the deformation modulus. Of the significant number of empirical equations that can be found in literature, most are non-linear, which makes the deformation modulus a parameter that is very sensitive to the quality and types of data used. © 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.