An Automatic Method of Direct Interpretation of Residual Gravity Anomaly Profiles due to Spheres and Cylinders

Abstract

We have developed a least-squares minimization approach to determine the depth and the amplitude coefficient of a buried structure from residual gravity anomaly profile. This approach is basically based on application of Werner deconvolution method to gravity formulas due to spheres and cylinders, and solving a set of algebraic linear equations to estimate the two-model parameters. The validity of this new method is demonstrated through studying and analyzing two synthetic gravity anomalies, using simulated data generated from a known model with different random error components and a known statistical distribution. After being theoretically proven, this approach was applied on two real field gravity anomalies from Cuba and Sweden. The agreement between the results obtained by the proposed method and those obtained by other interpretation methods is good and comparable. Moreover, the depth obtained by the proposed approach is found to be in very good agreement with that obtained from drilling information.