ISSN: 1945-7545
CODEN: GTJODJ
Page Count: 10

Grain-Size Distribution of Granular Soils by Computer Vision

Raschke, SA
Assistant professor, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA

Hryciw, RD
Associate professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Abstract

A semi-automated technique for obtaining the grain-size distribution (GSD) of granular soils using computer vision is presented. Backlighted digital images of a soil specimen dispersed over a glass specimen plate are acquired at three different magnifications. Images of the specimen are acquired by placing the specimen plate randomly beneath the field of view of a charged-coupled device (CCD) video camera. The size of particles with projected areas from 50 to 2000 pix² is measured in each image. Multiple images are acquired at each magnification until the measured size distribution of particles counted at that magnification stabilizes. Probabilistic corrections are then used to obtain a statistically unbiased GSD from the image data obtained at all three magnifications. A comparison of GSD data for two uniform and two nonuniform soils using both computer vision and sieving is presented.

Keywords:
grain-size distribution, computer vision, image processing, sieve analysis, granular soils, probability

Paper ID: GTJ10410J
DOI: 10.1520/GTJ10410J
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