“…From a monetary perspective, the application of ML techniques is also profitable, because it reduces the costs related to lab tests for ascertaining the UCS. It is important to note that the mentioned ML techniques have been used and applied to solve science and engineering problems [ 21 , 23 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ].…”