Determination of the Strike and the Dip of a Line Source Using Gravity Gradient Tensor

Abstract

In this paper, the automatic determination algorithm of strike and dip of a line source using gravity gradient on a single profile is proposed. In general, the gravity gradient tensor due to a line source has only two independent components because of its 2-Dimensional (2-D) characteristics. However, if the line source has the strike and dip regarding the observation profile, it comes to have five independent components. The proposed algorithm of the determination both strike and dip is based on the rotational transform that converts full gravity gradient tensor to reduced 2-D gravity gradient tensor. The least-square method is applied in order to find optimum rotational angles that make one of the row components minimalized simultaneously. The two synthetic cases of a line source are represented; one has strike only and the other has both strike and dip. This study finds that the automatic determination method using gravity gradient tensor can find directions of a line source in each case.