Estimation of multiple density-depth parameters from gravity inversion: Application to detached hanging wall systems of strike limited listric fault morphologies

Abstract

An inversion algorithm is developed to simultaneously estimate the fault plane geometry and the parameters pertaining to either densities or depths of multiple geologic formations within the hanging wall system of a strike-limited listric fault from the observed gravity anomalies. Fault planes of the structures are described by polynomial functions of arbitrary but specific degree. The applicability of the algorithm is demonstrated on both synthetic and real field gravity anomalies. In the synthetic example, pseudorandom noise is added to the gravity anomalies of the structure prior to inversion. From the inversion of gravity anomalies produced by a synthetic structure it was found that the estimated parameters more or less mimic the true parameters even in the presence of random noise. The estimated densities and depths of the formations from independent inversion of real-world gravity anomalies from the margin of the Chintalpudi sub-basin in India correlate well with the available drilling information.