BCGS Technical Talk – February 14, 2017

Speaker : Jan Franke

Dr. Jan Francke has spent his 27-year career working solely with deep GPR systems and applications, mainly in mineral exploration.  His experience spans 86 countries in every environment, ranging from Siberia to Libya.  He has authored dozens of technical papers and book chapters on GPR and conducts workshops on long-range GPR worldwide.

Title: A review of ground penetrating radar applications to mineral exploration

Date/Time: Tuesday February 14, 2017 @ 4:30pm

Location: 4th Floor Conference Room, Room 451, 409 Granville St. (UK Building at Granville and Hastings), Vancouver

Abstract:
The interest in mineral exploration applications for GPR has risen significantly in recent years, due partly to extraordinary claims of performance made by some promoters.  Although all radar systems are governed by the same physics, advances in electronics over the last decade have enabled much deeper penetration than was previously possible, from pocket-sized wireless systems operated by iPhones.

The talk will provide an overview of GPR’s history and principles, as well as its use in mineral exploration.  A review of applications of the technology will highlight successes, with penetration to hundreds of metres in non-polar environments, as well as unexpected failures in seemingly suitable settings.

Also addressed will be recent claims of extreme penetration through any environment using “lased” EM energy or “megawatt” transmitters.  These instruments and their data will be analysed within the context of accepted physics.  The talk will conclude with an overview of the future of deep GPR, including advances such as real-time sampling, novel transmission modulations, instrument miniaturisation, multi-frequency systems, hybrid EM-GPR systems as well as new deployment platforms such as UAVs.