“…Moreover, since soft rocks constitute transition materials between (hard) rocks and (stiff) soils, they are often too soft to be tested in rock mechanics apparatus and too hard for soil mechanics equipment [13,28,43]. Furthermore, they present numerous undesirable characteristics, such as low strength, disaggregation, presence of rock inclusions, capillarity suction, crumbling, high plasticity, slaking, and fast weathering [8,13,23,25,27,28,31,[44][45][46]. These issues are responsible for a lack of knowledge about their mechanical behaviour, which often leads to the adoption of very conservative parameters to the detriment of cost effectiveness.…”