NONLINEAR INVERSION OF RESISTIVITY PROFILING DATA FOR SOME REGULAR GEOMETRICAL BODIES

The inversion of resistivity profiling data involves estimation of the spatial distribution of resistivities and thicknesses of rock layers from the apparent resistivity data values measured in the field as a function of electrode separation. The drawbacks of using traditional curve-matching techniques to solve this inverse problem have been overcome by iterative linear techniques but these require good starting models even if the shape of the causative body is asssumed known. In spite of the recent developments in inversion techniques, no robust method exists for the inversion of resistivity profiling data for the simple model of dikes and spheres which are the classical models of geophysical prospecting. We apply three different non-linear inversion schemes to invert synthetic resistivity profiling data for the classical models embedded in a uniform matrix of contrasting resistivity. The three non-linear algorithms used are called the Metropolis simulated annealing (SA), very fast simulated annealing (VFSA) and a genetic algorithm (GA). We compare the performance of the three algorithms using synthetic data for an outcropping vertical dike model. Although all three methods were successful in obtaining optimal solutions for arbitrary starting models, VFSA proved to be computationally the most efficient.