Mechanical properties of some building stones from volcanic deposits of mount Erciyes (Turkey)

Mount Erciyes is a huge stratovolcano of the Central Anatolian province in Turkey and it has produced calc-alkaline and pyroclastic rocks, which have been widely used as dimension stone in low-storied buildings and especially in historical monuments in the past. In the region there are some 205 quarries extracting volcanic rocks. In this study, the locations of these quarries and information on their annual stone production are evaluated. In order to assess the material properties of the Mount Erciyes volcanic products, petrographic analyses and a number of rock mechanical tests were carried out. Significant correlations were found between the properties of the rock samples. In particular, there is a significant relationship between thermal conductivity and some non-destructive measurement values such as P-wave velocity, Equotip and Schmidt hardness, and it is clear from the regression equations that these tests can be used as indicators for evaluating the Mount Erciyes products.