ABSTRACT
Geological analysis during tunnel excavation is hard to achieve on site because of the difficult environment, limited accessibility, and strict time constraints. High-resolution scans of tunnel faces to create a digital twin allows to digitally analyse all tunnel surfaces and brings new insights about geological structures of the surrounding rock. These insights are important to plan further excavations and the tunnel securing. Powerful tools are needed to support geologists and tunnel engineers to optimize and maximize the analysis process both in accuracy and efficiency compared to an onsite analysis.
In this paper, a software-tool to accurately estimate rock volumes between tunnel faces is presented. The tool utilizes a powerful pipeline to create high-resolution 3D models of the tunnel faces, which are visualized in a high-performance 3D rendering environment. In this environment a tool for geologists was designed to improve their analytical methods with the opportunity to select lithologies on two tunnel faces and to calculate the estimated volume between them. This approach combines visual computing algorithms with geomathematical methods. It projects an engineer selected lithology or area on a tunnel face along the tunnel axis onto another tunnel face to calculate the volume per section within. These high-performance methods work in real-time to create an interactive experience for the geologists and engineers. Calculations are completed within a few seconds and work together with the real-time 3D visualization on common notebooks and personal computers.
The accomplished solutions presented in this paper are an important step towards improved geological analysis within our tunnel analysis software. Further, they provide a strong foundation towards a complete toolkit for geological exploration of digital twins of tunnel constructions.
