6 folded (5 of them maps) in pocket / Includes bibliography / xvii, 102, 8, 5, 10 [i.e. ca. 500] leaves (some folded) : ill., maps (some col.) ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Geology and Geophysics, 1985

[Truncated abstract] Magnetic gradiometers are powerful tools for mineral exploration. The magnetic field contains valuable information about the mineral content of the surveyed terrain. The magnetic gradient specifies the amount of spatial variation in the direction and magnitude of the magnetic field. Surveys that measure the magnetic gradient provide vastly more information about geological targets than the magnetic field alone. This technology could have enormous benefits in terms of new discoveries and lower exploration costs. The magnetic gradient is normally calculated by subtracting the outputs of two total field magnetometers which are separated by a baseline. In 1997, a direct string magnetic gradiometer (DSMG) was developed that directly measures magnetic gradients using only a single string as its sensing element. This thesis describes research conducted to improve the sensitivity and performance of the DSMG. The main advantage of the DSMG is that only gradients can induce second harmonic vibrations in the string. Thus, the DSMG is insensitive to uniform magnetic fields that we are not interested in, such as the global magnetic field of the Earth. By using inductive electronics to measure second harmonic string vibrations, we can select to measure the magnetic gradient of nearby targets. Recent work has shown that a magnetic gradiometer with a noise floor of 0.01 nT/m/ v Hz should be sufficiently sensitive for geophysical exploration. In order to reach this goal, this thesis presents an investigation of all noise sources affecting the DSMG. ... Gas damping is negligible in high vacuum and no vibration isolation is required. This means that longer strings with low resonant frequencies can be used. Using theoretical modelling, I show that a space borne DSMG should be able to match the white noise level of SQuID based magnetic gradiometers and have a lower 1/f noise corner. Deployment in space could be the most viable application of the DSMG because of the ease of operation and enhancement of sensitivity. If the thermal noise level is reduced then other sources of noise will start to become more important. When rotated in the Earth's magnetic field, the DSMG detects a pseudo magnetic gradient despite the field being almost uniform. A possible cause is magnetically susceptible parts which are magnetically aligning with the Earth's field. I have conducted a thorough investigation of magnetic susceptible parts in the DSMG and reported the results in this thesis. In the DSMG, a pair of inductive pickup coils are used to measure the string's displacement with a root mean square accuracy of 1011 m/ v Hz. This is adequate at present but the inductive electronics may not be sensitive enough after other improvements in the DSMG are implemented. Here, I present a new capacitive displacement readout with a high sensitivity of 1013 m/ v Hz. The thesis also presents some magnetic gradient measurements in the lab and the results of a ground survey in the field. These trial measurements are used to characterise the DSMG and demonstrate its effectiveness for airborne surveying.

Processed. / Bibliography: leaves 115-128. / xi, 128 leaves : ill., maps (some col.), 1 folded ; 30 cm. + 2 microfiche, 5 maps (folded), appendix and errata in pocket inside back cover. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dept. of Geology and Geophysics, University of Adelaide, 1989

Microfiche and maps (numbered 1-7) in pocket / Includes bibliography (6 unnumbered leaves) / 109, [84] leaves (some folded) : ill., maps (some col.) ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Economic Geology, 1984

This thesis investigates the potential of fractal dimension (FD) as a tool for enhancing airborne magnetic data. More specifically, this thesis investigates the potential of FD-based texture transform images as tools for aiding in the interpretation of airborne magnetic data. A series of different methods of estimating FD are investigated, specifically: • geometric methods (1D and 2D variation methods and 1D line divider method); • stochastic methods (1D and 2D Hurst methods and 1D and 2D semi-variogram methods), and; • spectral methods (1D and 2D wavelet methods and 1D and 2D Gabor methods). All of these methods are able to differentiate between varying theoretical FD in synthetic profiles. Moreover, these methods are able to differentiate between theoretical FDs when applied to entire profiles or in a moving window along the profile. Generally, the accuracy of the estimated FD improves when window size is increased. Similarly, the standard deviation of estimated FD decreases as window size increases. This result implied that the use of moving window FD estimates will require a trade off between the quality of the FD estimates and the need to use small windows to allow better spatial resolution. Application of the FD estimation methods to synthetic datasets containing simple ramps, ridges and point anomalies demonstrates that all of the 2D methods and most of the 1D methods are able to detect and enhance these features in the presence of up to 20% Gaussian noise. In contrast, the 1D Hurst and line divider methods can not clearly detect these features in as little as 10% Gaussian noise. Consequently, it is concluded that the 1D Hurst and line divider methods are inappropriate for enhancing airborne magnetic data. The application of these methods to simple synthetic airborne magnetic datasets highlights the methods’ sensitivity to very small variations in the data. All of the methods responded strongly to field lines some distance from the causative magnetic bodies. This effect was eliminated through the use of a variety of tolerances that essentially required a minimum level of difference between data points in order for FD to be calculated. Whilst this use of tolerances was required for synthetic datasets, its use was not required for noise corrupted versions of the synthetic magnetic data. The results from applying the FD estimation techniques to the synthetic airborne magnetic data suggested that these methods are more effective when applied to data from the pole. Whilst all of the methods were able to enhance the magnetic anomalies both at the pole and in the Southern hemisphere, the responses of the FD estimation techniques were notably simpler for the polar data. With the exception of the 1D Hurst and line divider methods, all of the methods were also able to enhance the synthetic magnetic data in the presence of 10% Gaussian noise. Application of the FD estimation methods to an airborne magnetic dataset from the Merlinleigh Sub-basin in Western Australia demonstrated their ability to enhance subtle structural features in relatively smooth airborne magnetic data. Moreover, the FD-based enhancements were able to enhance some features of this dataset better than any of the conventional enhancements considered (i.e. an analytic signal, vertical and total horizontal derivatives, and automatic gain control). Most of the FD estimation techniques enhanced similar features to each other. However, the 2D methods generally produced clearer results than their associated 1D methods. In contrast to this result, application of the FD-based enhancements to more variable airborne magnetic data from the Tanami region in the Northern Territory demonstrated that these methods are not as well suited to this style of data. The main conclusion from this work is that FD-based enhancement of relatively smooth airborne magnetic data can provide valuable input into an interpretation process. This suggests that these methods are particularly useful for aiding in the interpretation of airborne magnetic data from regions such as sedimentary basins where the distribution of magnetic sources is relatively smooth and simple. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1339560 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, Australian School of Petroleum, 2008