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Seismic Refraction Exercise For Master1

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50 views5 pages

Seismic Refraction Exercise For Master1

Uploaded by

moktarelemine053
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Author Axel Tcheheumeni Djanni, PhD

axel.tcheheumeni@ucad.edu.sn
Objective Use seismic refraction data for geological
interpretation
School Department of Geology, FST, UCAD
Academic Year/Date 2023-2024 / Tuesday, 11 March 2024
Lecture Introduction to Geophysics

Purpose:
This exercise allows students to analyze and interpret seismic refraction data for the
purpose of defining the depth to the water table and local stratigraphy. Data were
collected on the campus of UCAD, Dakar, Senegal

Comments:
The beauty of this exercise is that it can be done by hand, the calculations are relatively
simple, and it does not require additional equipment or computer programs apart from a
calculator. The results are simple to interpret, useful, and gratifying.

Materials:
Results of seismic refraction survey (see attached)
Graph paper (see attached)
Calculator
Note paper for tables and calculations

Procedure:

Step 1: Pick P-wave arrival times, namely ‘first break’ These are indicated by the
first departure from background noise recorded by each geophone.

Step 2: Make a table showing the geophone number, the arrival time in
milliseconds, and the arrival time in seconds.

Step 3: On the graph paper, plot the arrival time (in seconds) on the y-axis versus
the distance from the source (in feet) on the x-axis. In this example, the
geophones were equally spaced at 10 feet from one another.

Step 4: Draw lines to indicate layers of equal P-wave velocity.

Step 5: Calculate the velocity (v) of P-waves in each layer using the following
equation:
where d and t represent the distance (ft) and time (sec) of two separate
points along each line.

Step 6: a) Mark the x-distance to the intersection of the first and second
velocity lines as Xc1.
b) Mark the x-distance to the intersection of the second and third
velocity lines as Xc2.
c) Add velocity data to the graph for each layer.

Step 7: Calculate the depth (z1) of the boundary between Layer 1 and Layer 2
using the following equation:

Step 8: Calculate the approximate depth (z2) of the boundary between Layer 2 and
Layer 3 using the following equation:

Step 9: Interpret the composition of each layer using the following table (convert
the velocity column in meter/sec):

Material: Typical velocity (feet/sec):

Dry soil (vadose zone) ~ 1000


Moist soil (vadose zone) 2000-3000
Saturated soil (phreatic zone) ~ 5000
Compact, wet glacial till ~ 6000
Shale 7000-9000
Sandstone 8000-12,000
Limestone 12,000-16,000
Granite > 17,000

Step 10: Draw a stratigraphic column showing your interpretation.


Clearly identify the depth of the water table if possible.

Further Readings:

Burger, H.R., Sheehan, A.F., and Jones, C.H. (2006). Introduction to Applied
Geophysics. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. pp. 7-148.
Fetter, C.W. (2001). Applied Hydrogeology, 4th ed. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River,
New Jersey, pp. 483-490.
Results of seismic refraction survey at UCAD. Geophone spacing equaled 10 feet.

Seismic Wave Arrival Times (milliseconds)

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