An in‐hole shotgun source for engineering seismic surveys

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Abstract
We have conducted several source comparisons involving 12‐gauge and 8‐gauge Buffalo guns, a 7.3 kg sledgehammer, and a 75 kg weight drop. The results are strongly site‐dependent. We found that, when the near‐surface consisted of fine‐grained, water‐saturated sediments, the 12‐gauge Buffalo gun produced up to two orders of magnitude more energy than the conventional hammer across a broad frequency range. Under such conditions the gun produced the greatest improvement in energy between 200 and 400 Hz, where it yielded up to ten times more energy than the 75 kg weight drop. This indicates that the Buffalo gun may be particularly useful as a shallow reflection seismic source. However, at sites where the near‐surface materials were coarse‐grained and the water table was well below the ground surface, the advantages of using an in‐hole shotgun source as opposed to a hammer or weight drop were minimal. Nevertheless, in many areas we believe that the Buffalo gun is an excellent source for engineering seismic surveys. It is lightweight and portable (<5 kg), inexpensive to build (<$100 US), simple to use and maintain, and a good source of high‐frequency energy.

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