Development of a magnetic tracking system for monitoring soil movements induced by geohazards

Abstract

In the study of geotechnical hazards, such as soil liquefaction and landslides, the analysis of soil movements is always one of the major preoccupations. An efficient movement sensing technique requires the tracking of subsurface soil for the purpose of examining the mechanism involved. A magnetic tracking system is therefore proposed, with permanent magnets as trackers and magnetometers as receivers. When permanent magnets, deployed within the soil to serve as excitation sources, move with soil body during a geotechnical event, they generate static magnetic fields whose flux densities are related with the positions and orientations of the magnets. Magnetometers are used as receivers to detect the generated magnetic fields, which can be further used in calculating the magnets' locations and orientations based on appropriately developed algorithms. Comparison between situations where the trackers are exposed to air and embedded within soil was conducted to evaluate the influence of soil (wet and dry) on the tracking accuracy. Also, multi-objective tracking is realized by using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique combined with interior-point algorithm. The tracking errors are evaluated and applications of the proposed system in small-scale laboratory tests for geohazards are discussed.