Particle morphology characterization of waste-tyre-stabilized rock aggregates via computational geometric modellings

Abstract

This study offers a comprehensive understanding of the most important geometrical concepts for concave shape particles with very low sphericity. Study of concave hulls in three-dimensional space is performed with an emphasis on accurate and asymptotically fast algorithms. Based on that a three-dimensional concave hull algorithm is designed to generate the actual shape of irregular particles through a set of 3D surface coordinate data points captured by 3D handy laser scanner and photogrammetry. The algorithm is utilized for a wide range of large-scale waste tyre and rock aggregates to assess several fundamental theoretical hypotheses related to geometric parameters, including surface texture with concavity/convexity, concave hull volume, perimeters of projected area, and concavity computation that have not been tested before for highly irregular concave shape particles. As a result, the morphological characteristics of the waste-tyre-stabilized rock aggregate mixtures are analysed for mining operations. We also provide the details on how the application of the resulting particle morphology is employed in cloning particles with wide range of concavity distribution. The paper identifies the accuracy by implementing the proposed 3D concave hull algorithm for morphology analysis of concave particles and comparing the morphology analysis results against those of Finite Element Method (FEM), polar representation approach (PRA), and experimental data.