Seismic and Electrical Methods: By: Sharlane Joy V. Nepomuceno AND Rica Mae D. Lazaran
Seismic and Electrical Methods: By: Sharlane Joy V. Nepomuceno AND Rica Mae D. Lazaran
Seismic and Electrical Methods: By: Sharlane Joy V. Nepomuceno AND Rica Mae D. Lazaran
ELECTRICAL
METHODS
BY: SHARLANE JOY V. NEPOMUCENO
AND
RICA MAE D. LAZARAN
SEISMIC METHODS
• are the most commonly conducted geophysical surveys for
engineering investigations. Seismic methods depend upon velocities
of acoustical energy in earth materials. Accordingly, they involve the
generation of a short pulse of seismic energy and the permanent
recording of the arrival of seismic pulse at distant locations, with
time intervals after the pulse instant determined to millisecond
accuracy.
• Some types of explosive or the impact of a mass furnishes the
energy which is detected by sensitive seismometers operating with
electronic amplifiers and a suitable recorder.
Seismic Waves
• Any mechanical vibration is initiated by a source and
travels to the location where the vibration is noted.
• The vibration is merely a change in the stress state due to
a disturbance.
• The vibration emanates in all directions that support
displacement. It readily passes from one medium to
another and from solids to liquids or gasses and in
reverse.
• The direction of travel is called the ray, ray vector, or
ray path. Since a source produces motion in all
directions the locus of first disturbances will form a
spherical shell or wave front in a uniform material.
Two major classes of Seismic waves
1. Body waves- which pass through the volume
of a material. These are the fastest traveling of
all seismic waves and are called compressional
or pressure or primary wave (P-wave).
a. P-waves travel through all media that support
seismic waves; air waves or noise in gasses,
including the atmosphere. Compressional waves
in fluids, e.g., water and air, are commonly
referred to as acoustic waves.
b. The second wave type is the secondary or transverse or shear
wave (S‑wave). S-waves travel slightly slower than P-waves in
solids. S-waves have particle motion perpendicular to the
propagating direction, like the obvious movement of a rope as a
displacement speeds along its length. These transverse waves can
only transit material that has shear strength. S-waves therefore do
not exist in liquids and gasses, as these media have no shear
strength.
2. Surface waves- are produced by surface impacts,
explosions, and waveform changes at boundaries.
Surface waves travel slower than body waves. Two
recognized vibrations, which exist only at "surfaces" or
interfaces, are Love and Rayleigh waves.
a. Love waves- A type of seismic surface wave in
which particles move with a side-to-side motion
perpendicular to the main propagation of the earthquake.
The amplitude of this motion decreases with depth. Love
waves cause the rocks they pass through to change in
shape. Love waves have particle displacement similar to
SH-waves.
b. Rayleigh waves- an undulating wave that travels over the
surface of a solid, especially of the ground in an earthquake, with a
speed independent of wavelength, the motion of the particles being
in ellipses. A point in the path of a Rayleigh wave moves back,
down, forward, and up repetitively in an ellipse like ocean waves.
Surface waves
• are produced by surface impacts, explosions, and
waveform changes at boundaries. Love and Rayleigh
waves are also portions of the surface wave train in
earthquakes. These surface waves may carry greater
energy content than body waves. These wave types
arrive last, following the body waves, but can produce
larger displacements in surface structures. Therefore,
surface waves may cause more damage from earthquake
vibrations.
Table 1. Typical/representative field values of
Vp,Pb and n for various materials
• Data Acquisition
• Digital electronics have continued to allow the production of better
seismic equipment. Newer equipment is hardier, more productive, and
able to store greater amounts of data. The choice of seismograph,
sensors(geophones), storage medium, and source of the seismic wave
depend on the survey being undertaken.
;
where
ρ = resistivity of the medium composing
the wire,
L = length,
A = area of the conducting cross section.
Since the conduction of current in soil and rock is through the electrolyte
contained in the pores, resistivity is governed largely by the porosity, or void ratio,
of the material and the geometry of the pores. Pore space may be in the form of
intergranular voids, joint or fracture openings, and blind pores, such as bubbles or
vugs. Only the interconnected pores effectively contribute to conductivity, and
the geometry of the interconnections, or the tortuosity of current pathways, further
affects it. The resistivity ρ of a saturated porous material can be expressed as
where
F = formation factor,
ρW = resistivity of pore water
The formation factor is a function only of the properties of the porous
medium, primarily the porosity and pore geometry. An empirical
relation, Archie's Law, is sometimes used to describe this relationship:
(4)
where
a and m = empirical constants that depend on the geometry of the
pores,
φ = porosity of the material.
Table 1. Typical electrical resistivities of earth materials.
.
Classification of Electrical Methods
The number of electrical methods used since the first application around
1830 (Parasnis 1962) is truly large; they include self-potential (SP), telluric
currents and magnetotellurics, resistivity, equipotential and mise-à-la-masse,
electromagnetic (EM), and induced polarization (IP)