Potential and Limitations of Terrestrial Laser scanning for Discontinuity Roughness Estimation

Abstract

Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) greatly facilitates the acquisition of detailed and accurate 3D measurements of remote rock outcrops, at an operational range from several meters to a few kilometres. Reliable, quantitative measures of rock discontinuity roughness are necessary to characterize and evaluate the mechanical and hydraulic behavior of the rock mass. The aim of this research is to investigate the TLS potential and limitations for a reliable estimation of small scale roughness. TLS data noise and resolution define the level of extractable morphological detail, and therefore need to be known and associated with roughness value. The stationary variant of Discrete Wavelet Transform (SW..