Analysis of the earth resistivity response of buried cables

Current flow in homogeneous and layered conducting media is analyzed for the case where an axial conductor or cable is present. The cable is characterized by a specified axial impedance and is assumed to be infinite in length. Various configurations are chosen such as a current point source in an infinite, semi-infinite, and layered region where the cable is taken parallel to the interface(s). The resulting formulas for the potentials reduce to known cases in the absence of the cable. Using these formulations, we present some concrete calculated examples that are relevant to resistivity probing of perturbed homogeneous and layered structures. Only the two-electrode array is treated, but various cable orientations are considered. In general, it is found that a long axial conductor such as a bare cable will distort the potential distribution of the current in a major way. This leads to profound departures from the apparent resistivity curves calculated for idealized homogeneous and layered structures.U.S. Government Work not subject to U.S. copyright.