Choosing Appropriate Appraisal to Describe Peak-Spatial Features of Rock-Joint Profiles

Abstract

Understanding the contact behaviors of rock joint is of fundamental importance in many rock engineering practices. Most of the available contact models rely on the spatial features of asperity peaks as input parameters, such as peak density, radius, and height. However, there is no general accepted appraisal to characterize the spatial features of peaks distributed on the rough surfaces. The present study clarified how different peak identification criteria, accounting for the number of required neighboring points (three, five, and seven points), affects the peak spatial features for a rock joint profile [two-dimensional (2D)]. The three-point peak (3PP) criterion appears to be the most appropriate appraisal to identify the peaks for rock joint profiles, and was suggested to capture the peak spatial features. Further discussion of the effects of both sampling interval in the x-direction and preselected peak-threshold value in the z-direction on the peak spatial features of joint profile were provided on the basis of the 3PP criterion.