SEISMIC AND

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. 

Sources.  The seismic source may be a hammer striking the ground or

an aluminum plate or weighted plank, drop weights of varying sizes,
rifle shot, a harmonic oscillator, waterborne mechanisms, or explosives. 
The energy disturbance for seismic work is most often called the "shot,"
an archaic term from petroleum seismic exploration.
Geophones.  The sensor receiving seismic energy is the
geophone (hydrophone in waterborne surveys) or phone. 
These sensors are either accelerometers or velocity
transducers, and convert ground movement into a voltage. 
Typically, the amplification of the ground is many orders of
magnitude, but accomplished on a relative basis.  The
absolute value of particle acceleration cannot be determined,
unless the geophones are calibrated. 
Seismographs.  The equipment that records input geophone voltages
in a timed sequence is the seismograph.  Current practice uses
seismographs that store the channels' signals as digital data at discrete
time.  Earlier seismographs would record directly to paper or
photographic film.  Stacking, inputting, and processing the vast
volumes of data and archiving the information for the client virtually
require digital seismographs. 
A portion of the seismic energy striking an interface between two differing
materials will be reflected from the interface. 
The ratio of the reflected energy to incident energy is called the reflection
coefficient. 
The reflection coefficient is defined in terms of the densities and seismic velocities
of the two materials as:
 
                                                                                     
where
            R         =  reflection coefficient,
            pb1,pb2  =  densities of the first and second layers,  respectively,
            V1,V2  =  seismic velocities of the first and second layers, respectively.
 ELECTRICAL METHODS
- Electrical geophysical prospecting methods detect the surface
effects produced by electric current flow in the ground.  Using
electrical methods, one may measure potentials, currents, and
electromagnetic fields that occur naturally or are introduced
artificially in the ground.  In addition, the measurements can be
made in a variety of ways to determine a variety of results.  There
is a much greater variety of electrical and electromagnetic
techniques available than in the other prospecting methods, where
only a single field of force or anomalous property is used. 
• Electrical Properties of Rocks
• All materials, including soil and rock, have an intrinsic
property, resistivity, that governs the relation between the
current density and the gradient of the electrical potential. 
Variations in the resistivity of earth materials, either
vertically or laterally, produce variations in the relations
between the applied current and the potential distribution
as measured on the surface, and thereby reveal something
about the composition, extent, and physical properties of
the subsurface materials. 
• In an electrically conductive body that lends itself to description as a one-
dimensional body, such as an ordinary wire, the relationship between the current and
potential distribution is described by Ohm's law:
where
                     

;
                     

The resistance (R) of a length of

wire is given by

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)

• The self-potential (SP) technique is a passive electrical

geophysical method based upon the measurement of
spontaneous or natural electrical potential developed in
the earth due to: 1) electrochemical interactions
between minerals and subsurface fluids; 2)
electrokinetic processes resulting from the flow of
ionic fluids; or 3) thermoelectric mechanisms from
temperature gradients in the subsurface
• Telluric current, also called Earth Current, natural 
electric current flowing on and beneath the surface of the 
Earth and generally following a direction parallel to the
Earth’s surface.
• Resistivity is a measure of the resistance of a given size
of a specific material to electrical
conduction. Resistivity may also be referred to as the
specific electrical resistance, or volume resistivity.
• Equipotential method was one of the first electrical
methods and was used as far back as 1912 by
Schlumberger.  As explained elsewhere in this volume,
when electric energy is applied to two points at the
ground surface, an electric current will flow between
them because of their difference in electrical potential. 
• Mise-a-la-masse, is still used in mining exploration and
occasionally in geotechnical applications.  The name, which may
be translated as "excitation of the mass," describes an electrode
array, which uses the conductive mass under investigation as one
of the current electrodes.  In mining, the conductive mass is a
mineral body exposed in a pit or drill hole.
• Electromagnetic (EM) methods use transmitters to create
strong time-varying primary magnetic fields that induce
electrical currents to flow in conductive rocks. These
currents, in turn, create secondary electromagnetic fields
that are detected by receiver antennae.
• Induced polarization (IP) and resistivity are two electrical
properties measured in near-surface sediments as indirect
hydrocarbon indicators. They are usually measured at the
same time by inserting two electrodes into the earth surface
and passing a current through them.
THANK YOU
AND
GOD BLESS!