S53B-2808
Hammering Yucca Flat, Part One: P-Wave Velocity
Friday, 18 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
David G Tang1,2, Robert E Abbott2, Leiph A Preston2 and John Benjamin Hampshire II3, (1)University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States, (2)Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, United States, (3)Self Employed, Torrance, CA, United States
Abstract:
Explosion-source phenomenology is best studied when competing signals (such as instrument, site, and propagation effects), are well understood. The second phase of the Source Physics Experiments (SPE), is moving from granite geology to alluvium geology at Yucca Flat, Nevada National Security Site. To improve subsurface characterization of Yucca Flat (and therefore better understand propagation and site effects), an active-source seismic survey was conducted using a novel 13,000-kg impulsive hammer source. The source points, spaced 200 m apart, covered a N-S transect spanning 18 km. Three component, 2-Hz geophones were used to record useable signals out to 10 km. We inverted for P-wave velocity by computing travel times using a finite-difference 3D eikonal solver, and then compared that to the picked travel times using a linearized iterative inversion scheme. Preliminary results from traditional reflection processing methods are also presented. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.
