UC Berkeley

Point cloud modeling of rock slopes using LIDAR and Structure-from-Motion digital stereophotogrammetry provides,

at a minimum, thousands of facets and facet normals that can be used to identify the densities of orientations of rock mass

discontinuities, the geometries of potentially removable blocks, and the character of the excavation face. As part of the Engineering

Geology graduate curriculum at the Civil and Environmental Engineering program at the University of California, Berkeley we teach

graduate students an integrated methodology for [a] gathering point cloud information be laser or camera; [b] computing facets and

facet normals form point clouds for stereonet presentation and geometric analysis of block dimension; [c] extract rock mass

discontinuities from stereonet data to analyze key blocks, assess discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA) behavior, and model

rock slope stability. These new methods require a suite of different software tools discussed in the paper to move through the workflow

process. Computational rock mechanics provides data sets that are orders of magnitude richer in detail and result in better

understanding of rock slope and tunnel key block behavior. Full application of computational rock mechanics methods should reduce

the cost of bolting by identifying critical support orientations and design loads.