• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.21-26
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• 2016

Soil particle shape analysis was conducted with sands from Jumujun, Korea and Ras Al Khair, Saudi Arabia. Two hundred times enlarged digital images of the particles of those two sands were obtained with an optical microscope. The resolution of the digital images was $640{\times}320$. By conducting digital image processing, the coordinates of the soil particle boundary were extracted. After mapping those coordinates to the complex space, Fourier transformation was performed and the coefficients of each trigonometry term were computed. The coefficients reflect the shape characteristics of the sand grains and are invariant to translation. To evaluate the shape itself excluding the size of the soil particle, the coefficient was normalized by the equivalent radius of soil particle; this is called Fourier descriptor. After analyzing the Fourier descriptors, it was found that the major characteristics of Jumunjin and Ras Al Khair sands were elongation and asymmetry. Furthermore, it was found that the particle shapes reflect the self-similar, fractal nature of the textural features. The effects of resolution on soil particle shape analysis was also studied. Regarding this, it was found that the significant Fourier descriptors were not significantly affected by the image resolution investigated in this study, but the descriptors associated with textural features were affected.