Abstract: The three-dimensional (3D) structural model is a good way to represent the spatial morphology of geological entity, and is an effective carrier of geological structures, compositions, tectonics, and geological data in a 3D visualization space. Geological slices based on the Boolean operation (vector shear) can be used to extract crisscross virtual geological sections directly from a 3D geological model, which intuitively shows the spatial morphology of the stratigraphic structure and geological tectonics at a certain location. However, isolated geological sections cannot properly characterize spatial continuous changes of a geological structure, tectonics and phenomena. Therefore, we propose a visual analysis method of 3D geological models based on sequential sections. Corresponding to each scanning direction, the Boolean operation of geological structures, tectonics and attributive characters on each virtual section is implemented by using a multithreading-based real-time vector shearing technology. Thus the visualized geological sections which contain spatial topological structures and attributive characters are obtained. Multi-group sequential sections are successively generated, and the continuous and dynamic display of 3D geological models is performed by means of sequential sections eventually. This method possesses high flexibility, controllability and automaticity since the scanning direction, threads, section frames and other parameters can be controlled through a custom interface. Therefore, real-time and multi-angle dynamic scanning of 3D geological models can be achieved using the sequential sections as well as more intuitive, efficient and flexible visual analyses of geological space are implemented.

Key words: 3D geological model, vector shear, sequential sections, multithreading, dynamic scanning