City Research Online

Abstract

A newly developed imaging system is presented, which measures three-dimensional (3D) deformations of a soil surface in geotechnical experiments involving physical modelling. The method adopts the computer vision technique ‘structure from motion and multi-view stereo’ delivered by an open-source software MicMac. Three, 2 megapixel industrial cameras were synchronised and used to capture images of a deforming soil surface. The images were used to reconstruct the observed scene to a high-density, accurate 3D point cloud. A new method has been developed to process the obtained 3D point clouds and images to determine the 3D displacement vectors. The procedure is highly automatic which allows large data sets to be processed with minimal manual intervention. Two series of quantification experiments were carried out to assess the performance of the system which has shown the overall accuracy to be within 0·05 mm over a field of view of 500 × 250 mm. An example application is presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the 3D imaging system.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Permission is granted by ICE Publishing to print one copy for personal use. Any other use of these PDF files is subject to reprint fees.
Publisher Keywords:	centrifuge modelling; deformation; ground movements
Subjects:	T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Engineering
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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