Surface NMR Responses of Typical 3-D Water-Bearing Structures Evaluated by a Vector Finite-Element Method

Surface nuclear magnetic resonance (SNMR) technique has been widely applied to noninvasive groundwater exploration and aquifer quantitative characterization. Furthermore, it has the potential for studying and detecting hydrocarbon contaminants and for water resource management. To increase the tomography resolution of groundwater and expand the application range of SNMR, we first implemented its 3-D forward modeling using a vector finite-element (FE) method based on the total electric field. The key of SNMR forward modeling is the calculation of excitation magnetic field, and the total-field algorithm is an alternative scheme to numerically simulate the electromagnetic field. In this paper, we viewed the circular loop source as the combination of a certain number of horizontal electric dipoles. The unstructured tetrahedral mesh and local refinement technology were combined to precisely delineate the distribution of circular loop source, which effectively reduces the adverse effects of field source singularity. Then, the vector FE solver based on the total electric field was used to calculate the magnetic field distribution. The accuracy of the calculated results was validated by the analytical solutions for a circular loop laid on the surface of a homogeneous half-space. After calculating the excitation field, SNMR responses of three typical synthetic 3-D groundwater models were obtained with the basic signal response formula. Finally, we studied the effects of some important factors which have significant influences on SNMR signal responses and have practical importance in groundwater issues.