A large number of fractures are randomly distributed within rock masses, and these fractures play an important role in studying the mechanical behavior of rock masses, the movement of fluids in rock masses, and evaluating the stability of geotechnical engineering. The size of fractures is a key parameter for describing the distribution of fractures within rock masses. Therefore, estimating the size of fractures has significant theoretical significance and practical engineering value. In order to accurately estimate the size of fractures in the rock masses, in this study, it is assumed that the fractures within rock masses are ellipses without thickness. With mathematical methods, a new method for estimating the size of fractures using borehole-window sampling was proposed. Then, Monte Carlo simulations were used to verify the proposed estimation method. The results showed that the proposed estimation method can accurately estimate fractures with different density. Finally, a comparison was made between the proposed method and the method that only uses borehole sampling to estimate the size of fractures. The results indicate that compared with the borehole sampling method, the proposed estimation method in this study has higher accuracy. The proposed estimation method in this study enables a more comprehensive utilization of collected fracture data, thereby enabling a more accurate estimation of the size distribution of fractures within rock masses.
Zhu et al. (Mon,) studied this question.