*Article* **Orebody Modeling Method Based on the Coons Surface Interpolation**

**Zhaohao Wu 1,2, Lin Bi 1,2,3, Deyun Zhong 1,2,3,\*, Ju Zhang 1,2 , Qiwang Tang <sup>3</sup> and Mingtao Jia 1,2,3**


**\*** Correspondence: deyun\_zhong@csu.edu.cn

**Abstract:** This paper presents a surface modeling method for interpolating orebody models based on a set of cross-contour polylines (geological polylines interpreted from the raw geological sampling data) using the bi-Coons surface interpolation method. The method is particularly applicable to geological data with cross-contour polylines acquired during the geological and exploration processes. The innovation of this paper is that the proposed method can automatically divide the closed loops and automatically combine the sub-meshes. The method solves the problem that it is difficult to divide closed loops from the cross-contour polylines with complex shapes, and it greatly improves the efficiency of modeling based on complex cross-contour polylines. It consists of three stages: (1) Divide closed loops using approximate planes of contour polylines; each loop is viewed as a polygon combined with several polylines, that is the n-sided region. (2) After processing the formed n-sided regions, Coons surface interpolation is improved to complete the modeling of every single loop (3) Combine all sub-meshes to form a complete orebody model. The corresponding algorithm was implemented using the C++ programing language on 3D modeling software. Experimental results show that the proposed orebody modeling method is useful for efficiently recovering complex orebody models from a set of cross-contour polylines.

**Keywords:** geological modeling; orebody modeling; coons surface interpolation; contour interpolation; polygon triangulation
