Design and implementation of a marine seismic source by electrical discharge

Acoustic sources based on electrical discharge, commonly called sparker sources, are employed in surveys for high-resolution marine stratigraphy. In this work, a new seismic sparker-type transducer has been designed, built and tested to obtain specific characteristics: low cost, small size (50x50x15 cm³), high resolving power, perfect symmetry of the acoustic beam emitted, and high directivity. This source can, thus, also be used in shallow water, to delineate the first sedimentary layers. First, an analysis of the determined experimental radiation pattern, signal to noise, and wavelet shape is presented. The radiation pattern is subsequently compared to the theoretical one. Lastly, comparative tests with traditional sparker sources and with the boomer source showed the validity of the performance of the new source.