Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Detection And Elimination Of Rock Face Vegetation From Terrestrial Lidar Data Using The Virtual Articulating Conical Probe Algorithm, Kenneth John Boyko

Doctoral Dissertations

"A common use of terrestrial lidar is to conduct studies involving change detection of natural or engineered surfaces. Change detection involves many technical steps beyond the initial data acquisition: data structuring, registration, and elimination of data artifacts such as parallax errors, near-field obstructions, and vegetation. Of these, vegetation detection and elimination with terrestrial lidar scanning (TLS) presents a completely different set of issues when compared to vegetation elimination from aerial lidar scanning (ALS). With ALS, the ground footprint of the lidar laser beam is very large, and the data acquisition hardware supports multi-return waveforms. Also, the underlying surface topography is …

Development Of Lidar Assisted Terrestrial Radar Interferometry For Rock Deformation Monitoring, Ricardo Javier Romero Ramirez

Doctoral Dissertations

"Rock and soil slope movements cost millions of dollars annually. During the past few decades, engineers have relied on traditional methods to detect slope movements. These tools are valuable for small spatial areas but, may not be adequate or cost effective for large spatial areas. Remote sensing methods such as terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and terrestrial radar interferometry (TRI) provide excellent spatial coverage, and with adequate post-data-processing software, sub-millimetric scale deformation sensitivity can be achieved.

This work will present a comparative experimental study between TLS and TRI. The comparative experimental study will allow us to achieve the two main objectives …

Thermomechanical Analysis Of Rock Asperity In Fractures Of Enhanced Geothermal Systems, Chao Zeng

Doctoral Dissertations

"Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) offer great potential for dramatically expanding the use of geothermal energy and become a promising supplement for fossil energy. The EGS is to extract heat by creating a subsurface system to which cold water can be added through injection wells. Injected water is heated by contact with rock and returns to the surface through production well. Fracture provides the primary conduit for fluid flow and heat transfer in natural rock. Fracture is propped by fracture roughness with varying heights which is called asperity. The stability of asperity determines fracture aperture and hence imposes substantial effect on …