FRACTAL DIMENSIONING OF SAND GRAINS USING IMAGE ANALYSIS SYSTEM

Abstract

Engineers and earth scientists have successfully used the concept of fractal theory to better analyze the roughness of soil and/or rock particles, and how it affects the permeability, structure and distribution of pores in sedimentary rocks and their influence on strength. Use of fractals as a way to describe irregular or rough objects has been highlighted in articles by researchers working in fields such as powder mechanics, rock and soil mechanics, sedimentary petrography and geoenvironmental applications. Fractal scaling has been found appropriate to express such scale independence for collection of soil particles and aggregates. In many aspects, soil is a fractal medium and fractal models are available for the fragmentation of aggregates with fractal pore space, and with fractal surface. Applications of fractal concepts encompass description of soil physical properties such as pore-size distribution, pore surface area, and grain-size distribution. The roughness of particulate soils is an important characteristic that affects the mass behavior of the soil. The area-perimeter technique was used to predict the fractal dimension using image analysis system. This paper presents the effects of the roughness and sorting of the sand patterns with different shapes on fractal dimension. Results confirmed the significance of the roughness effect on fractal dimension.

Keywords

• Kum taneleri, Fraktal boyut, Alan-çevre metodu, Görüntü analizi