Accounting for the influence of flat earth surface in electrical prospecting

Abstract

Usually used in direct current electrical prospecting, the approximate method of taking into account the influence of the earth's surface consists in doubling the values of the electric potential found for the case of a body in an electric field in an unrestricted host medium, i.e., in the absence of an earth-air interface.In the present paper we analyze the errors introduced by the above method of taking into account the influence of the flat earth surface for bodies of regular geometric shape. For this purpose, for the approximate potential curves calculated using the usual doubling technique, such a shape of the body surface is selected for which the solution obtained by doubling is absolutely accurate.