ABSTRACT

The concept of fractals was developed by Mandelbrot (1982) to bring together, under one heading, a large number of objects that contained structures nested within one another like Chinese boxes or Russian dolls. For example, the Sierpensky gasket consists of triangles and so on to the nest level. Mandelbrot (1967) introduced this concept into a geological context. Noting that the length of a rocky coastline increased as the length of a measuring rod decreased according to power law, and thus, the power law was associated with the fractal (fractional) dimension. Fractal geometry plays a vital role in describing the geometry of deterministic chaos and it can also describe the geometry of mountains, clouds, and galaxies. The basis of this observation is that rocky coastlines have a similar appearance when viewed at different scales (called scale-invariant distribution) and such features or phenomenon creating these scale-invariant features can be studied using the concept of fractals.