WA Tech Night: DAS Reflection Seismic For Mineral Exploration in Harsh Environments

Title: DAS Reflection Seismic For Mineral Exploration in Harsh Environments

Presenter: Prof Milovan Urosevic

Date and Time: Thursday, May 2 · 1730 AWST

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/aseg-wa-tech-night-prof-milovan-urosevic-tickets-879313268657

Abstract:

A number of hyper-saline lakes across Western Australia are known to overlie substantial and diverse mineral resources. Exploring those by means of the application of conventional equipment is limited and prone to significant hardware issues and equipment damage. In contrast such an environment seems appropriate for the application of the DAS technology. This technology originated in the 1980s and its practical potential in seismic sensing was developed in the 1990s, as described in the historical review of Hartog (2018). Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) uses strain-induced optical distortion effects to re-purpose optical telecommunication fibres as multi-channel seismic arrays. In this study, we present the evaluation and application of DAS for seismic exploration of mineral resources over the years, through several field studies. We show that DAS has the potential to replace surface geophones in such environment. Further test were oriented towards implementation of a reflection mode DAS in a dry hard ground surface as typically found in mineral exploration. To implement DAS in the reflection mode we have developed automated DAS underground installation using a plough attached to a variety of different utility vehicles. The key aspects of the new super-effective 3D seismic exploration with DAS technology are discussed in our presentation. The results of 3D DAS seismic experiment is giving us confidence that implementation of DAS for mineral exploration has a bright future.

Bio:

Milovan Urosevic received a BSc (Hons) in geophysics from the University of Belgrade in 1980, an MSc in geophysics from the University of Houston in 1985 and a PhD in geophysics from Curtin University in 2000. He held leading roles in several major Australian cooperative research centres such as APCRC, CO2CRC, DETCRC, and MinEx CRC. His main interest is utilising new seismic technologies to advance the exploration of natural resources. Milovan is an Emeritus professor at Curtin University, Perth, WA and co-founder of HiSeis, a world-leading hard rock seismic company. He is a member of ASEG, EAGE and AGES.

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