A practical photogrammetric workflow in the field for the construction of a 3D rock joint surface database

Collecting morphological characteristics of rock joint surfaces and building a digital rock joint library with abundant sample types and sufficient sample numbers is important for fractured rock mass analysis. To solve the “inflexible field operation” problem in existing contact type and non-contact type data collection procedures, this work presents a photogrammetric workflow in the field for the construction of a 3D rock joint surface database. Innovations in some steps make it practical for field scenarios: image collection procedures in the field and post-processing steps of the SfM-MVS-derived dense point cloud. The performance is considered as good as that of white light scanning, and sub-millimetre accuracy is achieved during batch processing. Two rock joint databases containing 310 samples are established, and two application examples show very good potential of the proposed photogrammetric workflow in the evaluation of rock joint roughness and rock joint anisotropy.