The flat dilatometer (DMT) and piezocone penetration (CPTU) tests are likely to be among the most widely used in situ testing methods for soil characterization and indirect determination of geotechnical design parameters such as: strength, stiffness, permeability and compressibility. The flat dilatometer has proved to be a reliable, robust and adaptable tool, and the data obtained with this instrument is very repeatable, and easy to reduce and process. Furthermore, the addition of a seismic module to the standard flat dilatometer (SDMT) to measure the shear wave velocity (Vs) significantly complements the set of data typically obtained with a standard DMT test. Nonetheless, the experience in interpreting the combination between Vs and DMT data is fairly limited due to the recent introduction of the SDMT for commercial applications. Additionally, the estimation of the coefficient of earth pressure at rest (K₀) has been the most important application of the DMT since its introduction. However, a potential weakness of the DMT is that the derivation of K₀ is based upon empirical correlations developed some time ago and neither improvement work nor upgrade of these approaches has been performed in the last 10 years. Throughout the years several additional sensors have been developed in order to supplement the data collected with the CPTU test. Among the wide variety of sensor developed, the lateral stress module mounted behind a piezocone represents a promising tool for estimation of in situ lateral stress conditions from the interpretation of lateral stress penetration data. However, the popularity of the so called lateral stress cone has declined over the years due to constraints in both the instrumentation and the interpretation of measured data. Also, the application of this instrument remains limited to specific soils conditions and specific projects. However, the valuable experience gained throughout the years in the development and application of several lateral stress cones in combination with developments in electronics and understanding of soil behaviour allow the improvement of this type of technology. This thesis presents the results of a comprehensive laboratory and field testing programs performed by the author at several research sites located in the Lower Mainland of BC, undertaken in order to assess the performance of the seismic flat dilatometer and lateral stress seismic piezocone (LSSCPTU), built and develop at UBC. Firstly, the analysis of field measurements with the SDMT collected at several sites have demonstrated the potential for an improved soil characterization through the combination of DMT parameters and the small strain shear modulus (G₀). Additionally the usefulness of the DMT-C closing pressure for soil identification is shown. On the basis of several relationships identified from this data, a new soil type behaviour system based upon SDMT measurements is proposed. Furthermore, empirical correlations based upon fairly large and updated databases have been developed to estimate K₀ and Vs values from DMT parameters.

The Lena West property near Lac des Bois, NT, held by Diamondex Resources Ltd., is an area of interest for exploration for kimberlitic features. In 2005, Frontier Geosciences Inc. was contracted to carry out seismic reflection and time-domain transient electromagnetic (TEM) surveys to investigate the possibility of kimberlite pipes being the cause of total magnetic intensity (TMI) anomalies previously identified on the property. One small part of the property, Area 1915, was surveyed with two perpendicular seismic reflection lines 1550 m and 1790 m long and three TEM lines consisting of six or seven individual soundings each with a 200 m transmitter loop. The results generated by Frontier Geosciences did not indicate any obvious vertical features that correlated with the TMI anomaly. The purpose of this study is to reprocess the seismic reflection data using different approaches than those of Frontier Geosciences and to invert the TEM data using a 1-D inversion code, EM1DTM recently developed by the UBC Geophysical Inversion Facility, to improve upon previous results and enhance the interpretation. A secondary objective is to test the robustness of EM1DTM when applied to observed TEM data, since prior to this study it had only been applied to synthetic data. Selective bandpass filtering, refraction and residual statics and f-x deconvolution procedures contributed to improved seismic images to the recorded two-way traveltime of 511.5 ms (approximately 1100 m depth). The TEM data were successfully inverted and converted to pseudo 2-D recovered resistivity sections that showed similar results to those from Frontier Geosciences. On the final seismic reflection sections, several strong reflectors are identified and the base of the overlying sedimentary layers is interpreted at a depth of ~600 m. The TEM results show consistent vertical structure with minimum horizontal variation across all lines to a valid depth of ~150 m. However, neither TEM nor seismic reflection results provide any information that correlates well with the observed TMI anomaly.

Wavefield reconstruction is a crucial step in the seismic processing flow. For instance, unsuccessful interpolation leads to erroneous multiple predictions that adversely affect the performance of multiple elimination, and to imaging artifacts. We present a new non-parametric transform-based reconstruction method that exploits the compression of seismic data b the recently developed curvelet transform. The elements of this transform, called curvelets, are multi-dimensional, multi-scale, and multi-directional. They locally resemble wavefronts present in the data, which leads to a compressible representation for seismic data. This compression enables us to formulate a new curvelet-based seismic data recovery algorithm through sparsity-promoting inversion (CRSI). The concept of sparsity-promoting inversion is in itself not new to geophysics. However, the recent insights from the field of "compressed sensing" are new since they clearly identify the three main ingredients that go into a successful formulation of a reconstruction problem, namely a sparsifying transform, a sub-Nyquist sampling strategy that subdues coherent aliases in the sparsifying domain, and a data-consistent sparsity-promoting program. After a brief overview of the curvelet transform and our seismic-oriented extension to the fast discrete curvelet transform, we detail the CRSI formulation and illustrate its performance on synthetic and read datasets. Then, we introduce a sub-Nyquist sampling scheme, termed jittered undersampling, and show that, for the same amount of data acquired, jittered data are best interpolated using CRSI compared to regular or random undersampled data. We also discuss the large-scale one-norm solver involved in CRSI. Finally, we extend CRSI formulation to other geophysical applications and present results on multiple removal and migration-amplitude recovery.

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A study was undertaken to evaluate an automated process to invert for seismic moment tensors from seismic data recorded in mining environments. The data for this study was recorded at Nickel Rim South mine, Sudbury, Ontario. The mine has a seismic monitoring system manufactured by ESG Solutions that performs continuous monitoring of seismicity. On average, approximately 400 seismic events are recorded each day. Currently, data are automatically processed by ESG Solution's software suite during acquisition. The automatic processors pick the P- and/or S-wave arrivals, locate the events and solve for certain source parameters, excluding the seismic moment tensor. In order to solve for the moment tensor, data must be manually processed, which is laborious and therefore seldom performed. This research evaluates an automatic seismic moment tensor inversion method and demonstrates some of the difficulties (through inversions of real and synthetic seismic data) of the inversion process. Results using the method are also compared to the inversion method currently available from ESG Solutions, which requires the manual picking of first-motion polarities for every event. As a result of the extensive synthetic testing of the automatic inversion program, as well as the inversion of real seismic data, it is apparent that there are key parameters requiring greater accuracy in order to increase the reliability of the automation. These parameters include the source time function definition, source location (in turn requiring more accurate and precise knowledge of the earth media), arrival time picks and an attenuation model to account for ray-path dependent filtering of the source time function. In order to improve the automatic method three key pieces of research are needed: (1) studying various location algorithms (and the effects of increasing earth model intricacy) and automatic time picking to improve source location methods, (2) studying how the source time pulse can be accurately extracted from the seismic records, as well as the validity of various source models, and (3) studying how attenuation can be modeled more accurately to account for the filtering of the seismic waves through the earth media (in particular distortion to the source time function). / Thesis (Master, Geological Sciences & Geological Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2012-08-17 23:08:32.198

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