Application of Fractal Dimension in Analysis of Soil Micro Pores

Abstract

AbstractHow to describe the character of micro pores has a great importance to research properties of soils. The objective of this paper is to suggest a quantitative fractal analysis method to study the micro pores distribution of loess. The microstructure photos of soils can be obtained by scanning electronic microscope (SEM), then a suitable threshold is selected to process SEM image and to get a vectorization image. The information of the micro pores such as the effective area (A) and the effective perimeter (P) can be abstracted and according to a linear relationship between A and P in double logarithm coordinate system, a fractal dimension (FD) of micro pore distribution can be obtained easily. Comparing the FD of loess micro pores to different depth and the FD before and after collapsing, it shows that (1) the larger FD is, the more complicated micro pore distribution is, and (2) the FD of micro pore distribution is slightly larger than that before loess collapsing. The FD is an effective index to describe quantitatively the distribution of micro pores and also can use to explain the mechanism of collapse deformation.Keywordsmicro porefractal dimensionsoil structurequantitative analysis