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Detecting and Locating Underground Cavities by the Finite-Interval Spectral Power of Seismic Ambient Noise

Description: 

Detection and location of underground cavities is of great importance in urban development and civil constructions because undetected cavities of natural or artificial origin pose a serious geotechnical hazard.

Of special interest are the underground cavities produced by underground nuclear explosions. There are several reasons for this. One of them is vitally related to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) – an international treaty banning nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion which is yet to come into force. Detection and location of a cavity generated by an underground nuclear explosion can be an important proof of an underground nuclear explosion in the framework of CTBT on-site inspections.

We present two validation cases of the method that we have recently developed for detecting and locating an underground cavity – one for a CTBT test site near Felsőpetény in Hungary, the other for a site of the Tiny Tot underground nuclear explosion in Nevada USA.

We show that mapping the Finite-interval Spectral Power of seismic ambient noise makes it possible to identify a place at the free surface above an underground cavity. The method can utilize single-station measurements at a set of potentially irregularly distributed points in the area on the Earth’s free surface over a suspected cavity.

Session: Single-station Passive Exploration Methods: Status and Perspectives

Type: Oral

Date: 4/18/2023

Presentation Time: 05:30 PM (local time)

Presenting Author: Jozef Kristek

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors