A scanning electron microscopy image processing method for quantifying fabric orientation of clay geomaterials

摘要

A novel computerized procedure is presented for processing scanning electron (SEM) micro- graphs of argillaceous geomaterials in order to quantify the clay particle orientation. An index of fabric orientation is extrapolated from the pixels (5l2 X 5l2) with maximum brightness intensity, through an iteration 'thinning' process. A binary map of lines (vectors) is obtained which allows the determination of the clay particle orientation applying a line-following algorithm. The results are represented by a histogram (direction ranges at intervals of l0deg).