BINARY IMAGES OF SHEARED ROCK JOINTS - CHARACTERIZATION OF DAMAGED ZONES

The mechanical behaviour of fractured rock masses depends on the behav iour of each of its fractures. Fracture surfaces are non planar anisot ropic surfaces and to understand the role of the morphology in the mec hanical behaviour of rock joints, direct shear tests have been perform ed using mortar replicas of a natural fracture under specific conditio ns: normal stress, shear rate, shear displacements. Both, mechanical d ata and images of the sheared fracture surfaces are recorded. This pap er presents the acquisition procedure of the images, their segmentatio n, and the derived results.