A comparative study of hand-held magnetic susceptibility instruments.

Abstract

A study to compare six magnetic susceptibility (MS) instruments (the KT-10 supplied by Terraplus Inc., RT-1 produced by Fugro, SM30 produced by ZH Instruments, MS2K & MS2C produced by Bartington Instruments and MPP-EMS2+ probe produced by GDD Instruments (denoted as GDD)) was conducted to characterize the equipment on the basis of their accuracies, resolution, reproducibility, ease of use and response to drift. MS data were collected on BQ core from 3 holes, NQ core samples, 2 rock samples and 2 calibration samples at the Vale office in Thompson, Manitoba. The results show that the GDD and MS2K are most affected by temporal drift whereas the KT-10 and MS2C gave more repeatable results. The MS2C, MS2K and GDD generally gave higher susceptibility readings than the rest of the meters. It was also noted that measurements on the flat face of half-core samples were always higher compared to measurements on their respective whole core samples. There is a correlation between instruments, frequencies and sensitivities, but no relationship between frequencies of operation and temporal drift. Keywords