Year: 2025 | Month: December | Volume: 12 | Issue: 12 | Pages: 360-369
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20251241
Design and Implementation of Special Electrodes for Electrical Prospecting
Cheikh Diallo Diene1, Mapathe Ndiaye2, Alex Ousmane Diouf3
1Laoratory of Geophysics, 2Laboratory of Modelization and soils Mecanics, UFR Sciences de l’Ingenieur, Iba Der Thiam University, Thies, Senegal.
Corresponding Author: Cheikh Diallo Diene
ABSTRACT
This article presents the design and implementation of special electrodes for electrical prospecting, known as geoelectrodes. Geoelectrodes are based on highly conductive materials such as clay and marl, containing a bar of reinforcement all molded in a PVC tube. The geoelectrodes were manufactured by varying three parameters: the material used clay or marl, the diameter of the PVC of 75, 100 and 110 mm, the height of the PVC of 2, 3 and 5 cm. The resistivity measurements carried out on site showed that the clay-based geoelectrodes show low standard deviations below 4.5%, much closer to the values obtained with conventional metal electrodes. The 110 mm diameter and 5 cm height geoelectrodes give mostly low resistivity measurement errors, with a small difference compared to metal electrodes. Electrical tomography using the three types of electrodes, metal electrodes, clay-based geoelectrodes and marl-based geoelectrodes, produced approximately identical profiles. This work allows to find a solution to the general problem of non-polarizable electrodes characterized by a difficult ground-electrode contact with a high contact resistance in the presence of high resistivity grounds. It also makes it possible to circumvent the difficulties associated with the sinking of electrodes in hard terrain, reducing the measurement time during electrical prospecting campaigns.
Keywords: Electrodes – Electrical prospecting – Contact resistance – Geoelectrodes – Resistivity – ERT.
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