A seismic vibrator driven by linear synchronous motors

The seismic vibrator is an advanced seismic method to obtain images of the subsurface in a non-destructive way. The vibrators that are generally used suffer from the distortion of the signal in the low-frequency band that contains an important part of the data. This new type of vibrator is driven by linear synchronous motors (LSM) and it can produce very repeatable signals in the low-frequency band. The ability to produce undistorted low-frequency signals makes this new source suitable for the analysis of surface waves to extract shear wave velocities down to considerable depths and to investigate the response of buildings to earthquakes. It also opens up possibilities for the automatic processing of the seismic data through full waveform fitting.