Laboratory study on two-dimensional image analysis as a tool to evaluate degradation of granular fill materials

The shape of granular materials is known to affect strength and stiffness properties of soil and fills. Settlements in coarse fills are often explained by rearrangement within the soil skeleton induced by crushing and rounding of the individual aggregates in the intergranular contact points. These processes are not well investigated since it is difficult to measure changes at an aggregatelevel.Currently few attempts have been made to effectively measure and classify shape of granular soil and fill materials. One of the more promising methodologies is digital image analysis. Even if there are some studies on both two and three dimensional analyses on shape of aggregates, no study has focused on identifying shape changes as function of degradation effects of the fill materials.In this study degradation of ballast material has been studied in standardized micro Deval and Los Angeles tests and analysed by two dimensional image analysis and statistical methods. The results showed it was possible to statistically separate the shape and size of the materials before and after the degradation tests. To identify this difference it is essential to use more than one variable each for size and shape.The conclusion of the study is that two-dimensional image analysis can be used as a tool to measure and quantify shape changes on an aggregate level in order to measure degradation. If further developed, the technique can be useful to study deformation processes, e.g. crushing and rounding of aggregates, in coarse fill materials.<p>Godkänd; 2016; 20160530 (tomede)