SP2DINV: A 2D forward and inverse code for streaming potential problems

The self-potential method corresponds to the passive measurement of the electrical field in response to the occurrence of natural sources of current in the ground. One of these sources corresponds to the streaming current associated with the flow of the ground water. We can therefore apply the self-potential method to recover non-intrusively some information regarding the ground water flow. We first solve the forward problem starting with the solution of the ground water flow problem, then computing the source current density, and finally solving a Poisson equation for the electrical potential. We use the finite-element method to solve the relevant partial differential equations. In order to reduce the number of (petrophysical) model parameters required to solve the forward problem, we introduced an effective charge density tensor of the pore water, which can be determined directly from the permeability tensor for neutral pore waters. The second aspect of our work concerns the inversion of the self-potential data using Tikhonov regularization with smoothness and weighting depth constraints. This approach accounts for the distribution of the electrical resistivity, which can be independently and approximately determined from electrical resistivity tomography. A numerical code, SP2DINV, has been implemented in Matlab to perform both the forward and inverse modeling. Three synthetic case studies are discussed.