On the particle morphology characterization of granular geomaterials

Particle morphology is a fundamental property of granular geomaterials such as rock and soil. A reasonable characterization of irregular particle morphology is of great significance on determining materials' physical, mechanical and hydraulic behaviors. The purpose of this study is to establish a generic theory for the morphology characterization of irregular particles. First, the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) of the field of nonstationary signal processing is introduced into the morphology analysis, and then the complex morphology of irregular particles is decomposed into a series of analysis objects of different scales based on HHT. Then, for the first time, according to geometric measure theory, a comprehensive descriptor system of morphology characterization with clear physical meaning is rigorously established step by step starting from basic mathematical concepts such as set and measure, in which most existing morphology descriptors can be unified, and some new valuable descriptors are extracted. The scale decomposition and descriptor system comprise the complete and generic morphology characterization of irregular particles. At the same time, a highly efficient computation program including the scale decomposition and descriptor calculation of the characterization is provided as a free download. Particle morphology analyses of lunar soil simulants and common river sand are illustrated to validate the effectiveness of the proposed characterization. Because of their generality, except for irregular particles, the characterization and corresponding program have the potential to be applied to any irregular geometry.

Automated summary

Particle morphology is a fundamental property of granular geomaterials. This study introduces the Hilbert-Huang transform into morphology analysis and establishes a comprehensive descriptor system based on geometric measure theory. The characterization and corresponding program have the potential to be applied to any irregular geometry.