A combination of laser technology and fractals to analyse soil surface roughness

Laboratory experiments were conducted on artificially weathered mudrocks (i) to measure changes in the roughness following cycles of freezing and thawing, and (ii) to find a simple method to calculate roughness as an alternative method to standard deviation methods. Surface roughness was measured with a laser profile meter and the resulting measurements were analysed by a program written for the purpose. The analysis is based on calculation of the fractal dimension of the profile for selected ranges of scale, and estimated by linear regression. Results revealed distinct micro- and macrotopographic variations of artificially weathered surface samples.