Electrical properties of two‐component mixtures and their application to high‐frequency IP exploration of permafrost

Abstract

We investigate the problem of determination of the volumetric ratio between the two components of a heterogeneous mixture with unknown internal structure. If both resistivity and permittivity of one component are known to be much higher than those of the other within a sufficiently wide frequency range, the volumetric ratio may be roughly estimated from measured electromagnetic response of the mixture by making use of the variational approach. Otherwise, such estimation requires the exact knowledge of the inherent electrical properties of the mixed materials and application of some universal mixing model, such as the weighted power mean formula.The high-frequency induced polarization measurements are strongly influenced by the presence of ice inclusions in an investigated rock formation, which is commonly used for mapping of frozen ground within the permafrost regions. We show that for sedimentary rocks with low clay content, it is also possible to roughly estimate the ice concentration from broadband induced polarization data by using the two-component, weighted power mean model, which is confirmed by a lab experiment on a frozen core sample with known ice content.

Two-dimensional Inversion of wideband spectral data from the Capacitively Coupled Resistivity method – First Applications in periglacial environments

“…The Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), on the other hand, works at very high frequencies and focuses on the displacement current, determining the permittivity (Zorin and Ageev, 2017). Our aim is to measure in an intermediate frequency range…”

“…Polarizable materials, e.g. water-saturated sediments or mineralized rocks exhibit a strong frequency dependence of electrical parameters (Zorin and Ageev, 2017). This is especially true in periglacial areas, for materials with pure ice or large ice contents (Petrenko and Whitworth, 2002;Bitelli et al, 2004;Stillman and Grimm, 2010).…”

“…For the literature values of ice the attribute pure means that there is no impurity caused by other materials in the ice/water, but there are still variations based on the physical conditions like temperature. If ground material is frozen, like on permafrost or seasonal frost, the measured signal is expected to react as a composition of the basic material and ice (Zorin and Ageev, 2017). The parameters for frozen ground…”

Broadband Spectral Induced Polarization for the detection of Permafrost and an approach to ice content estimation – A Case study from Yakutia, Russia

“…Bittelli et al, 2004;Stillman and Grimm, 2010) and on physical models, such as the Maxwell-Wagner polarization, (e.g. Kozhevnikov and Antonov, 2012;Zorin and Ageev, 2017). The models have been developed theoretically and have been tested with laboratory data of frozen samples.…”

“…Therefore, models of four and three components have been suggested by Bittelli et al (2004) and Stillman and Grimm (2010). Theoretical investigations about the frequency-dependent electrical behaviour of frozen ground due to the polarization processes of ice were carried out by Kozhevnikov and Antonov (2012) and Zorin and Ageev (2017), with the aim to relate ice content directly to electrical permittivity. They assume fully saturated and frozen conditions, in which case the number of phases reduces to two (ice and matrix).…”