Study on the enhancement of data quality from shallow water seismic reflection survey

천해저 지반조사를 위한 수면 탄성파 반사법 탐사자료의 분해능 향상 연구

Recently, as the forerunner in establishing the Northeast Asia's logistics base, a lot of marine engineering works such as new ports and container terminals, extension of old ports, new bridges, land reclamation etc. have been progressed. Parallel to it, there is also an increasing demand for improving the safety of construction. In this situation, high resolution seismic reflection profiling can be well used, attempting to classify rocks and sediments under water, if possible, to delineate the distribution of grain sizes in sediments not only for calculating the cost of removing sediments from harbour's channels, but also for estimating the bearing capacities for bridge or port construction. However, the results from the corresponding reflection survey that has been in operation in our country can not be effectively used for engineering purposes mostly due to the insufficient resolution. Thus. in this paper, two innovative strategies are introduced to enhance resolution. The one deals with a newly designed exploration barge that will help reduce several kinds of noises encountered electrically or operationally. The other is associated with an establishment of optimum measuring system comprising e.g. a specially devised hydrophone with a combination of 7 piezoelectric elements. Field experiments performed at Busan harbour are illustrated. The quality of acquired data was thereby fundamentally improved in comparison with that obtained at the same time in a conventional way.