DSCope: Development of Automatic Program for Detecting Fractures and Measuring Dip Angles

Changes in underground environments have been predicted by investigating underground bedrock conditions and analyzing the shapes of discontinuities in the rocks. The most commonly used method is to drill a borehole, insert a camera inside and capture the wall of the borehole in a photograph to investigate the discontinuities. However, if the images of the borehole cannot be captured, the characteristics of the discontinuities in the bedrock are analyzed by capturing the drilling cores in photographs. In this case, considerable time is required to analyze the drilling cores with the naked eye and measure the attitudes of the discontinuities developed in the cores in detail. Moreover, the results may vary depending on the researcher’s perspective. To overcome these limitations, this study develops a program for analyzing photographs of drilling cores. The program can automatically identify discontinuities in drilling cores and measure the attitudes through linear fitting using only drilling core photographs. In addition, we apply the program to practical field data to verify its applicability. We found that the program could provide more accurate and objective information on drilling cores than the currently used method and could more effectively organize the characteristics of fractures in the study area.