Integration of Point Cloud Data for Numerical Simulations Using NURBS Surfaces

The numerical modelling of complex surface geometries represents a challenging task in computational geotechnics. Corresponding problem classes include non-horizontal topographic surfaces (TS) in mountainous terrain, rock mass discontinuities or steep slopes, presumably inducing significant stress redistributions in the project domain that need to be considered. This raises an obvious question at the interface with geographic information systems: How to integrate point-based surveying measurements defining the TS into the numerical modelling process? In this respect, we present a step-by-step methodology based on survey data from two infrastructure projects in Austria, at the core of which NURBS surfaces are used to generate TS models with high accuracy.