Development of a phased array sparker

Most of the metallogenic belt of metal ores are in the orogenic belt, the surface and subsurface geological conditions are very complicated, the conventional seismic exploration techniques can not meet the requirements of the seismic exploration, such as dynamite source, vibrator, airgun and the sparker. A phased array sparker was developed for this potential application, which mainly consists of nine modular sparker, a programmable pulse generator and nine ground transducers which can be easily inserted into the ground. Each sparker includes an isolated diode, a capacitor with a stored energy of 500 J and a thyristor discharge switch. The programmable pulse generator was used to control the discharging time of each sparker. The transducer used to convert the electric energy into the seismic wave energy has a hermetical discharging chamber filled with salt solution. The preliminary tests were presented.