TIME DMAIN ELECTROMAGNETIC

TEM WHY?
TEM measurements
a strong direct current (dc) is usually
passed through
an ungrounded loop (Figure 1). At
time t = 0 this
current is abruptly interrupted. The
secondary fields
due to the induced eddy currents in
the ground can
now be measured with a suitable
receiver in the
absence of the primary field (Figure
2).
• Transient EM sounding used primarily to delineate
layered structures of interest in geologic as well as oil
and groundwater exploration, delineating zones of
high conductivity within the ground with the
expectation that they might be associated with either
geothermal or massive sulfide targets.
• Transient EM prospecting, also known as inductive
TEM used for locating massive sulfide ore deposits at
great depths, their use is associated almost
exclusively with the mining industry and deep
graphitic conductors associated with uranium
deposits.
 PRINCIPLES OF TEM
• After a finite time, during which all turn-on transients have
practically vanished, this dc current is abruptly interrupted
(step function excitation).
• According to Faraday's law of induction, the rapid change
in transmitter primary field will induce eddy currents in a
neighboring conductor.
• Under quasi-static approximation these induced currents
will initially be confined only to the surface of the
conductor (surface currents).
• The magnitude and direction of these currents will be such
as to preserve the normal component of the pre-existing
primary magnetic field at the surface S of the conductor i.e.,
• where bno is the normal component of the primary
(normal) magnetic field.
• This is tantamount to saying that at time t = 0 the
magnetic field inside the conductor will remain
unchanged and there will be no interior induced
current flow.
• At all exterior points, the magnetic field will
change abruptly as a step function.
• In TEM terminology this is the early-time stage
of the transient process.
• As a result of ohmic losses, the induced surface currents will start dissipating (Figure 3).
• The region immediately inside the conductor will then see a decreasing magnetic field and
thus eddy currents will start flowing through it.
• This process is repeated in time at successive interior points and can best be described as an
inward diffusion of the current pattern, even though the induced currents themselves do not
usually flow in an inward direction.
• In TEM terminology this is the intermediate-time stage of the transient process.
• Once this process is completed, the configuration of the induced current distribution will be
more or less invariant in time.
• The inductance and resistance of each current filament has reached asymptotic values and we
only have an overall amplitude decrease (Figure 3).
• In TEM terminology this is the late-time stage of the transient process.
• The transient magnetic field due to these currents or, more usually, its time derivative can be
measured at a given station with a suitable receiver.
• For a current system fixed in geometrical location both the magnetic field and its time
derivative have similar spatial variation.
• In one variant of TEM methods (single loop method) the transmitter loop itself is used as
receiver after current turn-off.
• The rate of change of these currents and of their
accompanying magnetic field is dependent on the
conductivity, size, and shape of the conductor.
• By contrast, the initial (t = 0) surface current
distribution is independent of the conductivity of
the body and is only a function of the size and
shape of the conductor.
• As a consequence, the early-time stage of the
currents in the transient process is only weakly
dependent on the conductivity of the body.
• Physics of the transient effects can be obtained
from simple circuit theory by comparing a
TEM system with a transformer having three
very loosely coupled windings, with one of the
windings shorted to simulate the effect of a
conductive body (Figure 4).
• Let Mij be the mutual inductance between
loops I and j and R and L be the resistance and
inductance of the conductor (shorted loop). For
a step function excitation of the transmitter
loop, the current flowing in the conductor loop
is given by:
• Where Io is the transmitter current and tau = L/R is
the time constant of the underground circuit.
• In other words, a sharp discontinuity in the Tx current
will instantaneously create a current in the
underground circuit which will then decay
exponentially with a time constant tau.
• At time t = 0, the initial current amplitude depends
only on the primary field flux through the
underground circuit (IoMo1) and on the conductor size
(L) and is independent of the conductance (l/R). By
contrast, the time constant tau depends on both
conductance and size.
• The receiver coil output voltage es(t), which is
proportional to the time rate of change of the
secondary magnetic field created by currents in
the underground circuit can then be written as:
• Expression (2) does include the main characteristics of transient fields
(Figure 5a).
• For poor conductors (small -tau), the initial voltages are large but the field
decays rapidly.
• There is also a secondary impulse at time tau=0 in addition to the
exponential decay.
• For good conductors (large -tau) the initial voltages are smaller but the field
decays slower.
• We thus have a simple criterion of recognizing and differentiating the
effects of various conductors.
• If the receiver is capable of measuring directly the
magnetic field instead of its time derivative, no
secondary impulse is present at tau= 0 and the
factor tau does not appear in the denominator of
expression (2).
• In this case, the initial amplitude of the magnetic
field will be independent of its conductance
while its decay rate, as before, will be dependent
on both conductance and size (Figure 5b).
• EM induction process, at the low frequencies commonly
used in exploration, obeys primarily the diffusion equation
so wave propagation effects can be neglected.
• This follows because for typical delay times of interest in
TEM and for typical distances between transmitting and
receiving circuits, we are well within the quasi-static zone
where time delays due to propagation at the speed of light
can be ignored, and the quasi-static approximation can be
used.
• In time domain, the EM field components in rectangular
coordinates satisfy, in a homogeneous region in the earth,
the vector diffusion equation
• An important consequence of equation (4) is that if at any moment the magnetic
field due to the then existing current distribution in the ground is calculated directly
by Biot-Savart law, the magnetic field measured at that moment at any point in the
air is determined exactly.
• The past history of the induced current system or equivalently of its rate of change
does not influence the measured magnetic field.
• Thus, under quasi-static approximation, the magnetic field of the current system
induced in the ground is a potential field.
• Additionally, as a direct consequence of equation (4) each directional component of
the transient magnetic field is calculable from a mapping of any other component
over a plane by using either convolution in space domain or multiplication in
frequency domain.
• This is a direct consequence of the fact that for static magnetic fields the horizontal
and vertical components are the Hilbert transform of each other (Nabighian, 1972).
• This pseudo-static behavior will prove extremely useful in understanding the results
of transient field measurements.
UNIFORM CONDUCTING MEDIUM
For a step function excitation
of magnitude Ho established at time t = 0, the transient
fields are given by:
CONDUCTING HALF-SPACE
The main features of the response are the sign
change in the vertical component and the sign invariance
for the horizontal components. In addition, for
dual loop configurations (Figure 8b) there is an outward
migration of the zero-crossovers with increasing
transmitter-receiver separation.
• All above-surface magnetic sources will induce
only horizontal electric fields and currents in a
uniform or horizontally layered ground.
• This result is a direct consequence of the strong
conductivity contrast at the earth-air interface
which leads to the total cancellation of the vertical
electric field by electric charges induced on it.
• In other words, no matter what the source loop
shape in the air, the induced currents in the
ground will flow in horizontal planes.
• At time t = 0, when the current in the transmitter
loop is switched off, the induced surface currents,
under the quasi-static approximation, will be
distributed in such a manner as to maintain the
magnetic field everywhere at the value that
existed before turn-off.
• These initial surface currents are primarily
localized in the vicinity of the transmitter loop.
• For a source lying on the ground they are an exact
mirror image of the transmitter loop current.
• With the passage of time, the initial current distribution starts
diffusing into the earth.
• As the current system diffuses and decays, it appears to move
outward and down.
• At distances greater than those where diffusion is taking place, the
local current distribution maintains its initial value.
• A plot of the induced current density in the ground by a rectangular
loop situated on the surface of the earth is given in Figure 9 for
various normalized times.
• As can be seen, the downward and outward expanding current
pattern can be aptly described as a system of smoke rings whose
maximum, after a short initial period, moves downward at an angle
of approximately 30 degrees
• Because the induced current system migrates with
time, there is a significant difference in the response
of the surface magnetic field and its time derivative.
• From equation (4), we can obtain the magnetic field
at the surface by spatial integration of the fields of the
current system in the ground.
• The time derivative of the surface magnetic field can
be derived by differentiation of the magnetic field or,
more instructively, can be considered to be the spatial
integration of the magnetic field of a conceptual
current system which is the time derivative of the true
current system (Figure 10).
• As shown by Spies (1989) the dB/dt measurements
have less sensitivity to conductive structure at depth
than do B measurements.
• As shown, at no time is it necessary to have a
downward component of current density flowing
in the earth in order to accomplish this downward
diffusion.
• It can be shown (Nabighian, 1979) that, on or
above the surface of the earth, the combined
effect of all induced currents in the ground can be
approximated by the effect of a single current
filament of the same shape as the transmitter loop
(Figure 11) and which moves downward with
velocity

while increasing its horizontal dimensions proportional to the

diffusion depth 2t

• The downward movement of this equivalent
current filament takes place at an angle of
approximately 47 degrees, i.e., steeper than the
30 degrees for the actual induced currents.
• The current intensity of the equivalent current
filament varies inversely proportional with
time.
• At time t = 0, after current interruption in the
transmitting loop, the magnetic field at the surface of
the earth comes from an image current lying directly
under the transmitter loop and which, at points exterior
to the loop, creates a magnetic field with a negative
vertical component.
• At later times, with the downward and outward
migration of the equivalent current filament, the
vertical field will change sign.
• By contrast, the horizontal components start from zero,
reach a maximum, and then vanish while keeping the
same sign throughout the transient process.
• The sign change in the vertical component and the
maximum in the horizontal components of the
magnetic field take place when the equivalent
current filament is situated approximately below
the station on the transmitter loop side: the more
conducting the earth, or the more distant the
station, the more time it takes the equivalent
current filament to reach this position (Figure 12).
• It is easy to see that the zero crossover of the
vertical component migrates outward with time.
• At late times the field will become vertical and
practically independent of position.
• This change implies that the rate of decay of
the vertical field is expected to be slower than
that of the horizontal field.
• Indeed, it can be shown that at late times the
asymptotic expansions of the transient fields
over a halfspace can be written as (Wait and
Ott, 1972)
 1 
bz (t )  O  1.5  , emf (t )  O  1  ,
t  z  2.5 
t 
1 1
bh (t )  O  2  ,
t  emf h (t )  O  3  ,
t 
• Relation between the location of the equivalent current filament and
the location where the vertical component changes sign or the
horizontal component reaches maximum becomes more complex .
• A better approximation for time derivative measurements might be
to consider two opposite current filaments.
• Silic (1987) shows that the time derivative of the current system in
the ground consists of two smoke rings of opposite sign diffusing
downward as before.
• The main contribution to the measured surface field is the shallower
of the two.
• As is intuitively obvious, the zero-crossover for the vertical
component at a fixed station location occurs later in time for the
impulse response (emf) than for the step response, the crossover
being delayed by a factor of sqrt (3) in time.
• An inverse power law like expression (13) or
(14) will plot as a straight line on a log-log plot
(see Figure 8). This is a very diagnostic feature
of the half-space response in addition to the
previously mentioned outward migration of the
zero-crossover for the vertical component.
• For the single loop TEM system, a simple
examination of the smoke ring patterns in the
ground will show that the measured signal will
not change sign in time.
• However, the late-time asymptotic expansions
(13) and (14) remain the same.
Early-, intermediate-, and late-time TEM
processes are described as: