• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.25 no.2_spc
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• pp.55-69
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• 2020

Permeability-analyzing methods commonly involve small-scale drilling, such as pumping or slug test, but it is difficult to identify overall distribution of permeability of the entire target sites due to high cost and time requirement. Spectral induced polarization (SIP) method is known to be capable of providing distributions of both the porosity and the pore size, the two major parameters determining permeability of the porous medium. The relationship between SIP variables and permeability has been studied to identify the hydrological characteristics of target sites. Kozeny-Carman formula has been improved through many experiments to better predict fluid permeability with electrical properties. In this work, the permeability prediction techniques based on SIP data were presented in accordance with the hydrogeological and electrical characteristics of a porous medium. Following the summary of the techniques, various models and related laboratory experiments were analyzed and examined. In addition, the field applicability of the prediction model was evaluated by field case analysis.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.164-170
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• 2021

Frequency-domain and time-domain induced polarization methods can provide spectral information about subsurface media. Analysis of spectral characteristics has been studied mainly in the frequency-domain, however, time-domain induced polarization research has recently become popular. In this study, assuming a homogeneous half-space model, an inversion method was developed to extract Cole-Cole parameters from the measured secondary potential or electrical resistivity. Since the Cole-Cole parameters of chargeability, time constant, and frequency index are not independent of each other, various problems, such as slow convergence rate, initial model problem, local minimum problem, and divergence, frequently occur when conventional nonlinear inversion is applied. In this study, we developed an effective inversion method using the initial model close to the true model by introducing a grid search method. Finally, the validity of the developed inversion method was verified using inversion experiments.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.180-189
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• 2013

Geophysical exploration is widely used to develop strategic mineral resources in the world because of its efficient method in detecting mineralized zones in the metallic ore deposit. It is important to understand the physical properties of the stratum so that geophysical data can be more accurately interpreted. This paper is to comprehend physical properties of the rock at the Gagok mine, a typical skarn deposit in Korea. Thus, laboratory tests were conducted on specimens of ore and host rocks which were collected from rock outcrops and drill cores at the Gagok mine. Using the measurement system of rock physical property, we investigated the density, magnetic susceptibility, resistivity, and spectral induced polarization. According to the results, all physical properties of specimens had wide differences depending on contents of ore minerals, which are formed by skarnization. Especially, using the chargeability and time constant from the calculated spectral induced polarization data by the Cole-Cole inversion, we could estimate the volume contents as well as the grain size of the sulfide minerals. Therefore, the spectral induced polarization technique may be considered a useful method when exploring metallic ore deposit with sulfide minerals.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.202-208
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• 2021

Induced polarization (IP) was first published in a Korean academic journal in 1973, and it was soon applied to coal and metal ore exploration. Then, in universities and research institutes, IP modeling studies using the finite element approach and experimental studies on IP responses for artificial samples were conducted. In the mid-1980s, the spectral IP (SIP) measurement module was introduced to Korea, and physical scale modeling and inversion approaches were developed. Due to the decline of the mineral resource industry, this method was not actively applied. However, the SIP method was not applied In the 1990s, IP exploration was applied in the investigation of hydrothermal deposits of sulfide minerals and bentonite mineralization zones, as well as to areas where the groundwater was contaminated by intruding seawater. In the 2000s, three-dimensional inversion of the IP approach was developed, and high-precision geophysical exploration was required to secure domestic and overseas mineral resources, so SIP experiments on rock samples and approaches for field exploration were developed. The SIP approach was proven useful for the exploration of metal deposits containing sulfide minerals by applying it to explore the mineralization zone of gold-silver deposits in the Haenam region. The IP method is considered to be effective in exploring critical minerals (lithium, cobalt, and nickel) in high-tech industries. It also is expected to be useful for environmental and geotechnical investigations.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.212-219
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• 2016

The development of more advanced geophysical exploration techniques is necessary because the orebodies as yet discovered are increasingly changing in characteristics from shallow/high-grade to deep/low-grade. In this work, laboratory measurement of physical properties of rock samples and a field survey and interpretation of spectral induced polarization (SIP) have been conducted in a skarn metallic deposit, Gagok mine. The purpose of this study is that the applicability of SIP in the exploration of skarn metallic deposits is verified by the comprehensive interpretation between SIP characteristics of rocks obtained from the laboratory measurements and inverted survey results from the field data. In order to understand the SIP characteristics of each lithology, the data of eighty nine rock samples utilized in the previous studies were revaluated. The field survey was carried out using frequency of 0.25 Hz along a survey line designed for intersecting lithological boundaries and evaluating mineralized zones. The mineralized rocks were more conductive (low-resistivity) and capacitive (high-chargeability or strong-phase) than other rocks. Thus, SIP can be one of the very useful tools for the mineral exploration of the skarn deposits.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.99-108
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• 2022

Among induced polarization (IP) methods, spectral IP (SIP) uses alternating current as a transmission source to measure amplitudes and phase of complex electrical resistivity at each source frequency, which disperse with respect to source frequencies. The frequency dependence, which can be explained by a relaxation model such as Cole-Cole model or equivalent models, is analyzed to estimate SIP parameters from dispersion curves of complex resistivity employing multi-objective optimization (MOO). The estimation uses a generic algorithm to optimize two objective functions minimizing data misfits of amplitude and phase based on Cole-Cole model, which is most widely used to explain IP relaxation effects. The MOO-based estimation properly recovered Cole-Cole model parameters for synthetic examples but hardly fitted for the real laboratory measures ones, which have relatively smaller values of phases (less than about 10 mrad). Discrepancies between scales for data misfits of amplitude and phase, used as parameters of MOO method, and it is in necessity to employ other methods such as machine learning, which can deal with the discrepancies, to estimate SIP parameters from dispersion curves of complex resistivity.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.100-113
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• 2017

Induced polarization (IP) method is based on the measurement of a polarization effect known as overvoltage of the ground. IP techniques have been usually used to find mineral deposits, however, nowadays widely applied to hydrogeological investigations, surveys of groundwater pollution and foundation studies on construction sites. IP surveys can be classified by its source type, i.e., time-domain IP estimating chargeability, frequency-domain IP measuring frequency effect (FE), and complex resistivity (CR) and spectral IP (SIP) measuring complex resistivity. Recently, electromagnetic-based IP has been studied to avoid the requirement for spike electrodes to be placed in the ground. In order to understand IP methods in this study, we: 1) classify IP surveys by source type and measured data and illustrate their basic theories, 2) describe historical development of each IP forward modeling and inversion algorithm, and finally 3) introduce various case studies of IP measurements.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.171-179
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• 2021

We outline a process for estimating Cole-Cole parameters from time-domain induced polarization (IP) data. The IP transients are all inverted to 2D Cole-Cole earth models that include resistivity, chargeability, relaxation time, and the frequency exponent. Our inversion algorithm consists of two stages. We first convert the measured voltage decay curves into time series of current-on time apparent resistivity to circumvent the negative chargeability problem. As a first step, a 4D inversion recovers the resistivity model at each time channel that increases monotonically with time. The desired intrinsic Cole-Cole parameters are then recovered by inverting the resistivity time series of each inversion block. In the second step, the Cole-Cole parameters can be estimated readily by setting the initial model close to the true value through a grid search method. Finally, through inversion procedures applied to synthetic data sets, we demonstrate that our algorithm can image the Cole-Cole earth models effectively.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.194-201
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• 2021

Induced polarization (IP) effect is known to be caused by electrochemical phenomena at interface between minerals and pore water. Spectral induced polarization (SIP) method is an electrical survey to localize subsurface IP anomalies while injecting alternating currents of multiple frequencies into the ground. This method was effectively applied to mineral exploration of various ore deposits. Titanomagnetite ores were being produced by a mining company located in Gonamsan area, Gwanin-myeon, Pocheon-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. Because the ores contain more than 0.4 w% vanadium, the ore deposit is called as Gwanin vanadiferous titanomagnetite (VTM) deposit. The vanadium is the most important of materials in production of vanadium redox flow batteries, which can be appropriately used for large-scale energy storage system. Systematic mineral exploration was conducted to identify presence of hidden VTM orebodies and estimate their potential resources. In geophysical exploration, laboratory geophysical measurement of rock samples is helpful to generate reliable property models from field survey data. Therefore, we performed laboratory SIP data of the rocks from the Gwanin VTM deposit to understand SIP characteristics between ores and host rocks and then demonstrate the applicability of this method for the mineral exploration. Both phase and resistivity spectra of the ores sampled from underground outcrop and drilling cores were different of those of the host rocks consisting of monzodiorite and quartz monzodiorite. Because the phase and resistivity at frequencies below 100 Hz are mainly dependent on the SIP characteristics of the rocks, we calculated mean values of the ores and the host rocks. The average phase values at 0.1 Hz were ores: -369 mrad and host rocks: -39 mrad. The average resistivity values at 0.1 Hz were ores: 16 Ωm and host rocks: 2,623 Ωm. Because the SIP characteristics of the ores were different of those of the host rocks, we considered that the SIP survey is effective for the mineral exploration in vanadiferous titanomagnetite deposits and the SIP characteristics are useful for interpreting field survey data.