Comparison of seismic energy sources

Abstract

Knowledge about the power and other characteristic parameters of a seismic source is of general interest. Especially for shallow reflection seismic surveys many alternate sources are published and already in use. Common shallow reflection seismic energy sources are e.g. the sledge hammer, the Buffalo Gun and small amounts of explosives. Especially the lack of knowledge about the real displacement velocity led us to the following analysis. We analysed three different types of explosives with different amounts of charge, a sledge hammer with two iron contact plates of different size (15x15x1cm, 30x30x1 cm) and a Buffalo Gun which we built according to the suggestions of Steeples and Miller [Steeples et al., 1988]. We designed the Buffalo Gun for usage with three different calibres, whereby the cartridge with the smallest calibre number has the greatest diameter and therefore the greatest amount of gun-powder. Fig.4 shows a summary of the analysed sources.