Research on Micro-geometry of Sea Sands Using Scanning Microscope and Particle Analyzer

The micro-geometry of soil plays a vital role in its mechanical, osmotic and deforming properties. This paper presents micro-geometrical analysis of sea sand by applying Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Laser Particle Size Analyzer (LPSA). After image processing by Matlab, it can be concluded that with the augment of particle size, elongation and convexity increases while roundness and fractal dimension dwindles. Hence, the particle shape will be flatter and the surface will be smoother as well as less complicated with the growth of size. Besides, a majority of the grains are classified as rounded, and shapes of the particles turn to be less diverse for larger groups. Moreover, results of coefficient analysis show that convexity and roundness have a strong negative linear relation, while contour factor behaves little correlation with other parameters. Last by as significant, data provided by LPSA presents smaller deviation standard and consistently smaller elongation than SEM. This paper aims to provide reference regulations for experiments and simulations.