Electric characterization of sands with heterogeneous saturation distribution

In the soil sciences it is of great relevance to accurately determine the electromagnetic properties of the soils, specially the complex permittivity. But in the high frequency regime (relevant band for geophysical applications) accurate permittivity measurements are complicated as the relation of the measured quantities with the permittivity itself, becomes highly non-linear. Moreover, in this type of measurements (core scale), the medium is taken to be homogeneous and there is no study about the limitations of this approximation. The scope of our research is to set accurate measurements of the electromagnetic properties of the soils in the lab that will enhance the resolution of existing geophysical models and techniques. For that purpose we have developed a measurement tool and carried out a set of experiments to test the validity of measuring the permittivity as an effective property.Civil Engineering and Geoscience