Quantitative Assessment of Joint Roughness Coefficient from Televiewer and Core scan Images

텔레뷰어 및 코어 스캔 이미지를 이용한 절리면 거칠기 계수의 정량적인 평가

The behavior of rock mass and solute(e.g. groundwater, radioactivity) flow in fractured rock can be directly influenced by joint roughness. The characteristics of joint roughness is also a main factor for the rock classification(e.g. RMR, Q system) which is usually used in tunnel design. Nevertheless, most of JRC estimation has been carried out only by the examination with the naked eye. This JRC estimation has a lack of objectivity because each investigator judges JRC by his subjective opinion. Therefore, it will be desirable that the assessment of JRC is performed by a numerical analysis which can give a quantitative value corresponding to the characteristics of a roughness curve. Meanwhile, roughness curves for joint surfaces which are observed in drill cores have been obtained only along linear profiles. Although roughness curves are measured in the same joint surface, they can frequently show diverse aspects in a standpoint of roughness characteristics. If roughness curves can be measured along the elliptical circumferences of joint surfaces from core scanning images or Televiewer images, they will certainly be more comprehensive than those measured along linear profiles for roughness characteristics of joint surfaces. This study is focus on dealing with (1) extracting automatically roughness curves from core scan image or Televiewer image, (2) improving the accuracy of quantitative assessment of JRC using fractal dimension concept.