Assessment of two methods for quantitative measurement of rock fracture aperture

摘要

Accurate measurement of aperture distribution plays an important role in evaluating the hydraulic behavior of rock fractures.In this paper,the authors are devoted to the assessment of two methods,proposed by Brown and Wang respectively,for quantitative measurement of fracture aperture distribution.The principles of the two methods are outlined firstly.Three groups of artificial marble fracture specimens are prepared and the surface topography data are obtained by a 3D laser scanning system.Then based on the surface topography data,each method is adopted to calculate the aperture distribution.The mean apertures of fracture specimens are obtained by conducting statistic analysis on the aperture distributions.Constant hydraulic head flow tests on fracture specimens are also performed for inversion calculation of the hydraulic aperture.Comparisons between the mean aperture and hydraulic aperture of fracture specimens are provided to assess the applicability and accuracy of the two methods for quantitative aperture measurement.