3-D-laser measurements and representation of roughness of rock fractures

3-D-laser digitisation is applied for measuring the roughness of rock fracture surfaces and reconstructing the geometry of joint aperture. The suggested representation of roughness, which combines the Re-scaled Range Analysis technique for fractals with the concept of 3-D co-latitude, provides information about the angularity, anisotropy and scale-dependency. The method is applied to a schistosity joint of a hard schist.