Journal of Engineering Geology

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The in situ measurement of discontinuity geometry of rock mass exposures is a time consuming and sometimes hazardous process. Moreover, a large proportion of the exposure is often inaccessible. Thus, a fast and safe tool is required in order to acquire the information which characterizes the geological/structural regime. Digital image processing techniques provide the necessary tools for realizing this goal. This paper presents a methodology for automated discontinuity trace detection in digital images of rock mass exposures. In this study at first based on difference in gray level discontinuities with the face, fracture traces detected in images of rock face. Then some parameters of discontinuities geometry such as spacing, linear joint density, persistence, trace angle of joints and value of RQD are obtained. The Automated discontinuity geometry analysis system including: 1- Providing a digital image from rock face 2- The pre-processing on the images 3- Detection of edge or joint traces by the canny detector 4- Description of the edges using line detector by the Hough transform 5- The joint sets estimation using fuzzy methods and 6- Description the rock mass geometry properties.

Keywords: discontinuity geometry, digital image processing, canny detector, Hough transform, fuzzy methods

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