Resolution capability of ground-based transient electromagnetic method for low-resistivity thin layer

Abstract

At present 1D inversion is commonly used for data processing and interpretation of transient electromagnetic (TEM) method. It is important to study the resolution-capability for the thin layer to take better advantage of ground-based loop-source TEM method. In this study, we employ 1D Occam's inversion method to qualitatively and quantitatively study the resolution capability for a thin layer. The thin layer has low resistivity, and its thickness is 10 m. The buried depth ranges from 10 to 100 m with 10 m intervals. The numerical modeling results show that the inverted resistivity and thickness will more coincide with the true values of the thin layer if the differences of resistivity between the thin layer and background medium increase. The depth of the inverted minimum resistivity agrees with the position of the low-resistivity thin layer. For background resistivity less than 100 Ω·m, the maximum depths are 40, 50 and 80 m for ratios of 1:5, 1:10 and 1:20 between the resistivities of the thin layer and the background medium, respectively. The maximum depth indicates the one within which the thin layer can be well detected by TEM methods. For the background resistivity of 200 Ω·m, the corresponding maximum depths are 30, 30 and 60 m. This study will help to optimize the field-work parameter designing and to improve the accuracy of data processing and interpretation.

Keywords

• transient electromagnetic method
• 1d inversion
• low-resistivity thin layer
• resolution capability