Muon tomography of underground fracture zones

Authors

  • Gábor Nyitrai HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Budapest 1121, Hungary; Budapest University of Technology and Economics, 1111 Budapest, Hungary
  • Laszlo Balazs HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Budapest 1121, Hungary
  • Gergely Suranyi HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Budapest 1121, Hungary
  • Constantin D. Athanassas National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece
  • Dezso Varga HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Budapest 1121, Hungary

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31526/JAIS.2024.493

Abstract

A high resolution muography survey has been performed in the Királylaki tunnel in Budapest (Hungary) to search for unknown cavities. Preliminary radiographic measurements suggested large density anomalies above the tunnels in a 20--60 m thick cherty dolomite rock (2.5--2.7 g/cm3).

A Bayesian inversion method has been adapted to overcome the underdetermination originating from limited-angle tomographic nature of muography.
The angular resolution of the gaseous muon detectors enabled a spatial voxel resolution of 1--2 meters, and the 3D distribution of karstic fracture zones has been obtained. Multiple 5--10 m long core drills validated the existence of low-density regions. The core samples showed convincing agreement with the inversion, containing fractured rock (altered dolomite powder, below 1.8 g/cm3).

This result shows the potential of mapping underground fracture zones with muography which has possible applications for tunnel construction and maintenance, or hillside-slip risk assessment, among others.

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Published

2024-06-22

Issue

Volume 2024

Section

International Workshop on Cosmic-Ray Muography (Muography2023), Naples, Italy

License

Journal of Advanced Instrumentation in Science (JAIS) is an open access journal published by Andromeda Publishing and Academic Services. The articles in JAIS are distributed according to the terms of the creative commons license CC-BY 4.0. Under the terms of this license, copyright is retained by the author while use, distribution and reproduction in any medium are permitted provided proper credit is given to original authors and sources.

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How to Cite

[1]
“Muon tomography of underground fracture zones”, JAIS, vol. 2024, no. 1, Jun. 2024, doi: 10.31526/JAIS.2024.493.