BRADFORD

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

UNIVERSITY OF

A MatLab toolkit for river bed porosity analysis

Processed by: Angelos Ploumis (09012596) Supervised by: Dr Tim Gough Bradford, May 2011

abstract
This project is a combined experimental/computational modeling study aiming to provide an optical inspection tool for river bed porosity measurement. A MatLab image analysis software code is developed to process scanned images of gravel soil samples, detect edges of particles[7], calculate valuable statistics[3], find number of objects[7], recognize shapes of gravels[2], plot Particle Size Distribution curve[7] and calculate the porosity of the ground sample. The results from the image analysis procedure are successfully compared with theoretical values found in literature[1] and were expected for corresponding types of soil, and together with other checks the accuracy of the model to calculate porosity values from simple scans is estimated. The most important of these checks is the comparison with the experimental results that have been carried out to estimate real porosity values of specific gravel types and gave an estimation of 95% accuracy to the used methods. The optical software inspection of porosity is of great interest[1] in river and structural engineering. Keywords: Porosity; Particle Size Distribution; Grain size analysis; MatLab; Image analysis; gravel river bed; Color edge detection; laboratory flume experiments.

METHODOLOGY
MATLAB MODEL STEPS [2] [3] [4] [7] Open image with MatLab image analysis toolbox and transform it into table (MxN pixels) Make image Grayscale using the applicable threshold. Remove noise and fill the gaps that are results of discontinuing areas, shadows, etc.

Detect boundaries of particles and display them plotted for check from user. Calculate and display particle statistics. (Number of objects, image size in pixels, areas of particles, etc).
ImageSize: [1736 2816] NumObjects: 772 soil = 'Gravel'

Produce the particle size distribution curve and define soil classification. Graph 2: Particle Size Distribution
40 35

experiments
Seven sets of laboratory experiments[5] were conducted in a recirculating water flume to determine the porosity of the gravel material[6] spread on the bed of the flume. Three different types of gravels were used. Small gravels with average diameter about 10 mm, Big gravels with average diameter about 20 mm, and Mixed Gravels with a mixture of the two previous types of gravels in random analogy.
number of particles
30 25 20 15 10 5

0 4

10

12

14

16

size of particle (mm)

Work with individual object, find average sized particle to compare with PSD curve peak. Calculate the porosity of the sample of soil.
900 800 700

Flow of water (cm3/min)

600 500 400 300 200 100 0 0 20

datum small gravel big gravel mixed gravel

The data and measurements observed in the laboratory experiments produce[5] the following graph in which it is possible to observe the comparative difference of the flows for different mediums and their difference with the datum flow (only water).

Figures: Exported images from MatLab image analysis are helpful to optically confirm the results during procedure.

>> porosity = BlackPixels/TotalPixels*100; porosity = 19.3487

Conclusions
The results of the developed model are checked for their accuracy, comparing with theoretical values[1], with optical confirmation[7], comparing with experimental data[6] and other methods. Porosity model
#1 #2 #3 small big mixed

V Q t
40 60 80

VV VT

experiment 18.3 % 32.9 % 20.1 %

error 14 % 28 % 19 %
4.3 % 4.9 % 1.1%

experiment

Table 1: Comparison of the experimental vs the model results for the porosity. Model vs Experimental results show a relativity of 95%.

time (min)

Graph 1: Comparative graphical presentation of the different data for flows vs time observed during the experiments.

These differences are transformed [6] into percentile changes of volumes (pores of medium or total volume for datum) and give the way for calculation of the porosity of the bedform.

test

image

PSD curve

porosity

Table 2: Comparison of model results for two images of same soil captured from different height. The comparison of the results shows great accuracy with an error of 3.4%. The Particle Size Distribution curves have the same shape and peaks in same number (average particle size). The differences in porosity results and PSD curves are caused by the change in image definition. Particles less than 300 pixels are removed.

references
[1] Church, M.A. (1987), River bed gravels: Sampling and analysis, Wiley-Interscience [2] Demirkaya, O. (2009), Image Processing with MATLAB, Taylor & Francis/CRC [3] Trauth, M.H. (2006), MATLAB recipes for earth sciences, Springer [4] McMahon, D. (2007), MATLAB demystified, McGraw-Hill [5] Lomax, W.R. (1980), Laboratory work in Hydraulics, Richard Clay Ltd [6] Bear, J.J (2010), Groundwater and Aquifers, Modeling Groundwater Flow, Theory and Applications of Transport in Porous Media, 23: p. 65-80 [7] Mathworks, Inc (2010), MATLAB Image Processing Toolbox Users Guide, available from: http://www.mathworks.com/help/toolbox/images/

21.4 %

24.8 %

Acknowledgements: I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Tim Gough, for his valuable support and expert advice during all the process of the project implementation, the theoretical direction, the software development and the laboratory work. Also, many thanks to Dr Leigh Mulvaney-Johnson and Dr H.S. Rajamani for their valuable help in the development of the MatLab code and their precious ideas. This project is dedicated to my friends and family who helped in their own way.