Determining the surface roughness coefficient by 3D Scanner

Currently, several test methods can be used in the laboratory to determine the roughness of rock joint surfaces.However, true roughness can be distorted and underestimated by the differences in the sampling interval of themeasurement methods. Thus, these measurement methods produce a dead zone and distorted roughness profiles.In this paper a new rock joint surface roughness measurement method is presented, with the use of a camera-typethree-dimensional (3D) scanner as an alternative to current methods. For this study, the surfaces of ten samples oftuff were digitized by means of a 3D scanner, and the results were compared with the corresponding Rock JointCoefficient (JRC) values. Up until now such 3D scanner have been mostly used in the automotive industry, whereastheir use for comparison with obtained JRC coefficient values in rock mechanics is presented here for the first time.The proposed new method is a faster, more precise and more accurate than other existing test methods, and is apromising technique for use in this area of study in the future.