Resistivity and IP modelling of an anisotropic body located in an isotropic environment

Abstract

A solution based on Tabarovskii's coupled pair of surface integral equations is given for the potential of a direct current flowing in an electrically anisotropic body and within the enclosing isotropic surroundings. The sources of the secondary potential exterior and interior to the body are fictitious surface charge distributions. The equations are solved numerically using point matching with pulse functions as subsectional basis functions. The model used in the applications is a long prism, excited by long line current electrodes aligned parallel to the strike. The strike length is set at a length sufficient to guarantee 2D behaviour of the model. Comparisons of computation results indicate that for the models, electrode arrays and numerical procedures applied, the solutions based on fictitious surface sources converge faster and behave more regularly than those based on real surface charges. When compared with previously published integral equation solutions, the present solution seems to be relatively efficient, even in the case of purely isotropic models. The model experiments also showed that at moderate resistivity contrasts, the anomaly shapes are strongly dependent on the directions of the principal axes of the body resistivity. However, when the external resistivity is more than 100 times that of the geometric mean of the principal resistivities in the body, with the principal resistivities differing from each other by at most one order of magnitude, the contribution of the anisotropy to the anomaly diminishes as a result of electrical saturation.