Development of a fuzzy logic based online visualization application for 2D geotechnical cross-section modeling

Abstract

2D underground models that reflect the physical, mechanical and structural properties of the geological units below the ground are called geotechnical cross-sections. In order to visualize these cross-sections, geotechnical engineers record the measurements obtained from vertical electrical sounding, seismic refraction or drilling methods. The visualization process is done by hand and it may vary depending on the researcher’s academic knowledge, intuition and drawing ability. Therefore, a visualization may be considered inaccurate by another researcher. However, geotechnical cross-sections should not vary according to a researcher’s perspective. For this reason, there is a need for an application that standardizes the process and has the ability to visualize cross-sections fast and in a practical way. For this purpose, we have developed a web-based visualization application that automatically generates geotechnical cross-sections. A fuzzy logic approach with dynamic rules has been applied to standardize the visualization process. In our experiments, hand-drawn cross-sections were compared to those that were generated by our application and the mean visualization accuracy of the system was calculated as 88.39%.