Measurement of three-dimensional shrinkage deformations and volumes of stabilised soft clay during drying with Structure from Motion photogrammetry

The paper applies the Structure from Motion photogrammetry technique to measure three-dimensional shrinkage deformations of a cylindrical specimen during drying. A clay–binder mixture was statically compacted, and its shrinkage behaviour was observed for four weeks with a newly established photogrammetric system. The complete surface information including XYZ coordinates and RGB values was then reconstructed and formed into dense point cloud data, with which the volume change and shrinkage deformations are computed. In volume change determination, the reconstructed dense point cloud achieves a fine reproduction of the specimen surface, leading to satisfactory accuracy. The computed volume deviation was within 495.3 mm³ (0.24%) and 4170 mm³ (1.83%) for the dummy cylinder and clay specimen, respectively. Both values are significantly smaller than the volume deviations computed with a classical approach that involves artificially creating markers on the specimen surface. In the computation of shrinkage deformations, the paper proposes a novel method that detects the fast point feature histogram of the point clouds and then matches the detected descriptors, leading to an improvement in three-dimensional deformation determination. The compacted sample shrinks, and the computed axial deformations increase quasi-linearly with height. However, due to the noticeable tilt that occurred during drying, the calculated radial deformations are scattered at the same height and appear misleading. Circumferential deformations and strains are therefore adopted to represent the true material behaviour.