PhD Pro­ject

Quan­ti­fi­ca­ti­on of geo­tech­ni­cal pro­per­ties from geo­lo­gic re­con­struc­tion of de­po­si­tio­nal his­to­ry and sub­soil li­tho­lo­gy –
A know­ledge-ba­sed in­ter­pre­ta­ti­on and sta­tis­ti­cal mo­de­ling ap­proach for wind farms in North and Bal­tic Seas

This PhD work is part of the SynCore pro­ject fun­ded by the Fe­deral Mi­nis­try of Eco­no­mic Af­fairs and En­er­gy (Ger­ma­ny). Syn­Co­re has an over­ar­ching ob­jec­tive of re­du­cing the cost of off­shore wind­farm con­struc­tion in the North and Bal­tic Seas by ge­ne­ra­ting syn­the­tic Cone Pe­ne­tro­me­ter Test (CPT) pro­files from seis­mic in­ver­si­on at­tri­bu­tes. The con­sor­ti­um of the par­ent Syn­Co­re pro­ject con­sists of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bre­men, Fraun­ho­fer IWES, Fraun­ho­fer ITWM, Geo­tech­nik und Dy­na­mik Con­sult GmbH,
and In­no­gy SE.

Wi­t­hin the con­text of off­shore wind­farm con­struc­tion, high-re­so­lu­ti­on seis­mic re­flec­tion and geo­tech­ni­cal data ac­qui­red in two stu­dy are­as in the North Sea and Ar­ko­na Ba­sin (sou­thern Bal­tic Sea) would be in­te­gra­ted to stu­dy near-sur­face in­ter­vals in this PhD pro­ject. The spe­ci­fic ob­jec­tives are to:
(1) re­veal de­tai­led sub­soil struc­tu­res, frame­work con­di­ti­ons, geo­lo­gi­cal pro­ces­ses, and ty­pi­cal li­tho­lo­gic pro­per­ties as­so­cia­ted with bu­ried de­po­si­tio­nal sys­tems in the stu­dy are­as;
(2) ge­ne­ra­te com­pre­hen­si­ve 3D sub­soil mo­dels with geo­lo­gi­cal pro­per­ties and un­cer­tain­ties; and
(3) es­ta­blish geo­lo­gi­cal boun­da­ry con­di­ti­ons for seis­mic in­ver­si­on.

Time-depth func­tions would be used for stra­ti­gra­phic cor­re­la­ti­on of ne­ar­by CPT pro­files to pro­ces­sed seis­mic data. De­tai­led cha­rac­te­ri­sa­ti­on of the seis­mic data cou­p­led with do­cu­men­ted geo­lo­gi­cal pro­ces­ses would en­su­re a re­lia­ble in­ter­pre­ta­ti­on of se­di­ment fa­cies, de­po­si­tio­nal his­to­ry and geo­lo­gi­cal struc­tu­res in the stu­dy are­as. Ty­pi­cal li­tho­lo­gic va­lues pu­blis­hed for in­ter­pre­ted fa­cies in the stu­dy area would be used to as­sign ex­pec­ted va­lues of se­di­ment pe­tro­phy­si­cal pro­per­ties to each geo­lo­gi­cal unit, and the­se would ser­ve as boun­da­ry con­di­ti­ons for seis­mic in­ver­si­on. Sta­tis­ti­cal mo­del­ling of sub­soil units in the stu­dy are­as would be achie­ved through ho­lis­tic in­te­gra­ti­on of all geo­lo­gi­cal and geo­phy­si­cal data in­clu­ding the seis­mic in­ver­si­on pro­ducts and se­di­ment phy­sics trends. Sub­soil mo­del­ling would be per­for­med with a soft­ware pa­cka­ge that would be de­ve­l­o­ped by a pro­ject part­ner, Fraun­ho­fer ITWM. In the re­sul­tant sub­soil mo­dels, li­tho­lo­gic pro­per­ties would be as­so­cia­ted with each geo­lo­gi­cal unit, and their le­vels of un­cer­tain­ties would be spe­ci­fied.

The­sis Com­mit­tee