Influence of Earthing Systems on ERT Measurements

Soil resistivity measurements need to be taken without any electrically conductive material nearby, e.g. fences, pipelines or earthing systems, otherwise the measurement would be affected by this conductive material. With this work
we demonstrate the usage of the applied geophysical method ‘ERT’ (Earth Resistivity Tomography) for measurement and an inversion algorithm to create the inversion soil model in the vicinity of an earthing system.
By using an appropriate geophysical inversion algorithm it is also possible to isolate the conductive structure and provide a good soil model for further earthing system design. It can be also seen that the orientation of the survey line to measure the apparent soil resistivity has a significantly influence on the measurement results.