China Safety Science Journal ›› 2025, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (S2): 131-138.doi: 10.16265/j.cnki.issn1003-3033.2025.S2.0015

• Safety engineering technology • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Identification of structural planes of dangerous rock mass on high and steep slopes based on close-range UAV photography

DING Xinglong(), YU Zhengxing, ZHANG Yihai**(), SHI Zhilei   

  1. Cathay Safety Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing 102209, China
  • Received:2025-06-10 Online:2026-02-04 Published:2026-07-01
  • Contact: ZHANG Yihai

Abstract:

To address the challenges of geological surveys and the limited stability assessment of unstable rock masses in high and steep rock slopes, UAVs were used for their flexibility, mobility, safety, and efficiency in rapidly and accurately acquiring structural characteristic information of unstable rock masses, thereby supporting slope stability evaluation. By taking the Xinjing Coal Mine landslide as a case study, close-range photography via UAVs was employed to obtain high-resolution and high-precision images of the landslide boundary. The structure from motion (SFM) algorithm was applied to generate detailed and texture-rich 3D point clouds and solid models. After accurately estimating point cloud normals, the HSV color space was used to colorize the point clouds, revealing the distribution characteristics of structural planes. The random sample consensus (RANSAC) point cloud multi-plane segmentation algorithm was applied to identify the structural planes of the main broken wall's rock mass, and stereographic projection was utilized to analyze the stability of the main broken wall's rock mass. The results indicate that RANSAC can effectively identify structural planes from point cloud data containing noise and outliers, and the structural planes in the main broken wall's rock mass are grouped into three sets. The probabilities of planar sliding, wedge sliding, and toppling failure are 14.89%, 37.76%, and 11.83%, respectively.

Key words: unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), close-range photography, high and steep slope, structural plane identification, stereographic projection

CLC Number: