Three-dimensional reconstruction of realistic stone-based materials with controllable stone inclusion geometries

Stone-based materials are heterogeneous construction materials that mainly consist of coarse stones and fine matrices. When using the numerical simulation tools (FEM, DEM, FDEM) to study the mechanical properties of the tone-based materials, the irregular stone-inclusion geometries cannot be neglected. The main objective of this study is to generate three-dimensional models of realistic stone-based materials with controllable stone-inclusion geometries. To achieve this goal, two major methodologies are adopted: (1) the Spherical Harmonic Transform (SHT) method and Inverse Monte-Carlo (IMC) algorithm are employed to randomly generate the 3D particle model of irregular stones with controllable geometries at three different shape scales, including form, roundness and roughness, and (2) based on the Spherical Harmonic function, an overlapping detection algorithm is proposed to facilitate the rapid allocation of the 3D SHT-based particles. The proposed algorithm can quantitatively control several geometrical features of the generated stone-based materials in an efficient and precise manner. Finally, the application of the proposed approach is demonstrated through the discrete modelling of stone-based materials with different stone contents and stone shapes. The proposed study has the significance to pave a viable pathway for stochastic modelling of stone-based materials pertaining to various construction and manufacture processes.