Demarcation of homogeneous structural domains within a rock mass based on joint orientation and trace length

This paper presents a new method for determining the structural domain boundaries within the rock mass. This new method is based on a statistical comparison of data from pairs of sample regions. The stereonet is divided into 100 windows with approximately equal areas. The poles of joints occurring in each corresponding window on the two projection plots of the regions being compared are then merged and arranged in ascending order with respect to their trace lengths. Finally, the Wald–Wolfowitz runs test is used to identify the homogeneity of structural populations by analyzing the joint sequence. Based on a significance level of 0.01, the homogeneity of structural populations collected from four adjacent adits at the Songta dam site is determined using the proposed method. The results show that the boundaries of structural domain change with the sizes of the sampling domains being compared. The initial sampling domains should be selected according to the engineering geological conditions of the studied area. In addition, the clear advantage of the proposed method is that both joint orientation and trace length are considered.