Practices and Advances in Exploring the Subsurface Structure and Its Temporal Evolution with Repeatable Artificial Sources

The earth's structure may change with time under natural or anthropogenic loading.Monitoring the subtle changes of the subsurface structure with repeatable seismic sources such as repeating earthquakes,ambient seismic noise and artificial sources has become one of the hot topics in seismological research. These studies provide important clues in understanding the physical process of hazardous events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In this review we introduce the practices and advances in exploring and monitoring the subsurface structure with artificial seismic sources. This review is orgainzed as follows. Firstly,we describe the studies on the characteristics of different types of seismic source( especially the airgun source). Then the advances on data processing and mechanical understanding are depicted. At the end of this review,we reveal the prospects of future study of exploration and monitoring of the subsurface structure and its temporal variations using artificial sources.

Study on the Source Characteristics of Downhole Airgun with Different Excitation Environments

The measurement of underground medium variation using a repeated artificial source has gradually become an important goal to pursue. In recent years,we have developed and improved a technology system with large capacity airguns excited in land reservoirs by transplanting marine seismic exploration technology. The excitation effect has a close relationship to airgun capacity,water environment,and excitation conditions. In view that large capacity airgun must be excited without a water environment,we expand the system to use in downhole. Based on the BHS-2200 LL downhole airgun with a capacity of250in3,this paper carries out a comparative analysis on the characteristics of an airgun source excited in 0. 2m- and 5. 0m-diameter wells,and the results show that:( 1) The dominant frequency of the airgun signal excited in a 5. 0m well is mainly from 10 Hz to40Hz,lower than that in a 0. 2m well,and the larger body of water is good for bubble oscillation.( 2) In terms of exciting energy,the signal excited in a 5. 0m well has stronger energy than in a 0. 2m well,with a difference of 1 order in magnitude,and the signal can be detected up to 9km excited in a 5. 0m well with a single shot.( 3) The airgun signal has good repeatability in both excitation wells. The downhole airgun excitation technology system has potential application in dynamic monitoring near a fault zone with a small scale range, exploration of oil and mineral resources, and modern urban geophysical environment.

Study on the Deconvolution Method and Processing Flow of Airgun Source Data

With its high repeatability,the airgun source has been used to monitor the temporal variations of subsurface structures. However,under different working conditions,there will be subtle differences in the airgun source signals. To some extent,deconvolution can eliminate changes of the recorded signals due to source variations. Generally speaking,in order to remove the airgun source wavelet signal and obtain the Green's functions between the airgun source and stations,we need to select an appropriate method to perform the deconvolution process for seismic waveform data. Frequency domain water level deconvolution and time domain iterative deconvolution are two kinds of deconvolution methods widely used in the field of receiver functions,etc. We use the Binchuan( in Yunnan Province,China) airgun data as an example to compare the performance of these two deconvolution methods in airgun source data processing. The results indicate that frequency domain water level deconvolution is better in terms of computational efficiency;time domain iterative deconvolution is better in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio( SNR),and the initial motion of P-wave is also clearer. We further discuss the sequence issue of deconvolution and stack for multiple-shot airgun data processing. Finally,we propose a general processing flow for the airgun source data to extract the Green 's functions between the airgun source and stations.

Comparative Study on Two Methods for Measuring Wave Velocity Change of Crustal Medium Based on Large Volume Airgun Excitation Data

This paper proposes the application of dynamic programming method to calculate the relative change of wave velocities and compares its similarities and differences with the cross-correlation delay estimation method based on interference.The results show that:①the trend of wave velocities obtained by cross-correlation method and dynamic programming method are consistent.Besides,it is considered that the calculated result using cross-correlation delay method is reliable.②Compared with the cross-correlation delay method,the calculated result of the dynamic programming method has a magnifying effect and is more sensitive to small disturbances.③Under ideal conditions,the wave velocity change trend calculated by P-wave and S-wave phase should be consistent.In addition,the cross-correlation delay method is used to calculate the wave velocity change.Under appropriate conditions,the process of recovering from the suspected wave velocity before the M_L1.1 earthquake near the airgun source can be observed.

Resolution assessment of the three-dimensional acquisition geometry of the Anhui experiment in"Geoscience Yangtze Plan"

According to the actual observation conditions of the Yangtze River valley from Anqing city to Maanshan city,we designed the 3D acquisition geometry,and applied the multi-scale checkerboard semblance analysis to assess the preliminary resolution of the designed observation.The checkerboard semblance tests use the refraction and reflection travel-time simultaneous inversion algorithm to quantitatively provide both resolution assessment of velocity structure and Moho topography.The multi-scale checker-board semblance recovery results show that while the chec-kerboard semblance threshold value is 0.5,the preliminary resolution of the designed acquisition geometry is better than 10 km in the upper crust(the depth is less than 10 km),around 15 km in the mid-crust(the depth is 10?25 km),and better than 20 km in the lower crust(the depth is 25?33 km).The preliminary tomographic resolution for the Moho topography is about 20 km in the ray-path coverage area beneath the acquisition geometry.While the checkerboard semblance threshold value is 0.75,the preliminary resolution is 20 km in the upper crust,around 20?25 km in the mid-crust and 25 km in the lower crust.And the preliminary tomographic resolution for the Moho topography is better than 30 km in the ray-path coverage area beneath the acquisition geometry.These non-linear checkerboard tests reveal that the designed acquisition geometry is suitable to image the crustal velocity structure of the Yangtze River valley in the Anhui province.

The role of varied metal protrusions on the conductor surfaces in corona discharge subjected to DC high voltages

Conductor corona performance is significant in the evaluation of electromagnetic environment for high voltage power transmission lines. The influence of artificial contaminated conductors on corona discharge was studied and turned out to be complicated. The ionized field strength on the corona cage was measured by field mill. Meanwhile, photos of corona plumes were photographed and grayed to quantitate the corona discharge intensity. Subsequently, a calculation model for equivalent electric field strength coefficient was established to evaluate the discharge intensity of conductors in coaxial cylindrical electrode. It could be found the computational results achieved an agreement with the observed experimental phenomena. By means of simulation results, a reasonable explanation was given to the finding that the closer the distance between the two protrusions was, the lower the corona discharge intensity and higher corona inception voltage of the conductors would be. In summary, the distributions of corona sources played an important role in the corona discharge and this work would provide an important reference for the evaluation of corona effects on the surface of contaminated conductors.