ABSTRACT
Aperture replicas of a natural sandstone fracture were made at 0 mm, 1 mm, and 2 mm shear displacements. Both the number of contact points and the fractional contact area decrease with increasing shear displacement. As shear displacement increased, the ratio of standard deviation to mean aperture increased slightly, and the aperture became more closely correlated in the direction parallel to the roughness ridges than in the direction of shear.
