First-Arrival Tomography for Mountain Tunnel Hazard Assessment Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Seismic Source and Enhanced by Supervirtual Interferometry

First-Arrival Tomography for Mountain Tunnel Hazard Assessment Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Seismic Source and Enhanced by Supervirtual Interferometry

Preliminary tunnel surveys are essential for identifying geological hazards such as aquifers, faults, and karstic zones. While first-arrival tomography is effective for imaging shallow anomalies, traditional seismic sources face significant limitations in forested mountainous regions due to mobility...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jun Zhang, Rongyi Qian, Zhenning Ma, Xiaoqiong Lei, Jianyu Ling, Xu Liu, Guibin Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-05-01
Series:Remote Sensing
Subjects:
UAV seismic source
first-arrival tomography
supervirtual interferometry
tunnel geological hazards
forested mountain geophysics
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/17/10/1686
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Summary:Preliminary tunnel surveys are essential for identifying geological hazards such as aquifers, faults, and karstic zones. While first-arrival tomography is effective for imaging shallow anomalies, traditional seismic sources face significant limitations in forested mountainous regions due to mobility, cost, and environmental impact. To address this, we deployed a seismic source delivered by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for a highway tunnel survey in Lijiang, China. The UAV system, paired with nodal geophones, enabled rapid, low-impact, and high-resolution data acquisition in rugged terrain. To enhance the weak far-offset refractions affected by near-surface attenuation, we applied supervirtual refraction interferometry (SVI), which significantly improved the signal-to-noise ratio and expanded the usable first-arrival dataset. The combined use of UAV excitation and SVI processing produced a high-precision P-wave velocity model through traveltime tomography, aligned well with borehole data. This model revealed the spatial distribution of weathered zones and bedrock interfaces, and allowed us to infer potential fracture zones. The results offer critical guidance for tunnel alignment and hazard mitigation in complex geological settings.
ISSN:2072-4292

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