CURVATURE ANALYSIS OF TRIANGULATED SURFACES IN STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY

This paper addresses the problem of characterizing the shape of a geol ogical surface on the basis of its principal curvatures. The surface i s assumed to be modeled as a set of adjacent triangles defined by the location of their vertices and a method is proposed for estimating num erically the principal curvatures at the vertices of the triangles usi ng a local C-2 interpolant. Also shown is how principal curvatures can be useful for studying the deformation of a geological surface (with application to 3D balanced unfolding), and analyzing the folding or fa ulting of the interface between two adjacent layers.