The analysis of fracture profiles of soil using fractal geometry

Abstract

The fracture profiles of three soils (taken from Dexter and Horn 1988) are analysed according to their fractal dimensions D. D, which is a measure of how the 'apparent' length of a fracture path increases with decreasing ruler size, is found to be a good quantifier of the tortuousity of fracture paths. The fractal analysis is compared with a more traditional statistical method of analysing fracture profiles. It is shown that the latter method, unlike fractal analysis, can omit a significant proportion of a tortuous fracture path and therefore leads to an underestimate of any roughness parameter.