Rounding (sediment)

Roundness is the degree of smoothing due to abrasion of sedimentary particles. It is expressed as the ratio of the average radius of curvature of the edges or corners to the radius of curvature of the maximum inscribed sphere.

Rounding, roundness or angularity are terms used to describe the shape of the corners on a particle (or clast) of sediment. Such a particle may be a grain of sand, a pebble, cobble or boulder. Although roundness can be numerically quantified, for practical reasons geologists typically use a simple visual chart with up to six categories of roundness:

This six-fold category characterisation is used in the Shepard and Young comparison chart and the Powers chart but the Krumbein chart has nine categories.

Rounding of sediment particles can indicate the distance and time involved in the transportation of the sediment from the source area to where it is deposited.

Speed of rounding will depend on composition, hardness and mineral cleavage. For example, a soft claystone pebble will obviously round much faster, and over a shorter distance of transport, than a more resistant quartz pebble. The rate of rounding is also affected by the grain size and energy conditions.

Angularity (A) and roundness (R) are but two parameters of the complexity of a clast's generalised form (F). A defining expression is given by:

F=f(Sh, A, R, Sp, T) where f denotes a functional relationship between these terms and where Sh denotes the shape, Sp the sphericity and T the micro-scale surface texture.

An example of this practical use has been applied to the roundness of the grains in the Gulf of Mexico in order to observe the distance from the source rocks.

Abrasion occurs in natural environments such as beaches, sand dunes, river or stream beds by the action of current flow, wave impact, glacial action, wind, gravitational creep and other erosive agents.

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