Application of magnetic method to characterize Abaya campus building site, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract A geophysical survey involving magnetic method is conducted using ENVI-MAG proton precision magnetometer. The study is carried out with the aim of identifying the possible geological structures which may responsible for the failure of engineering structures. Three traverses having east –west orientation with a ten meters profile spacing and a readings station spacing and one traverse across the three traverses and randomly collected magnetic data were used. At each station three readings were taken and averaged out in order to increase the accuracy of data and diurnal and geomagnetic corrections were made. With the corrected data different anomalous maps were produced like total magnetic field anomaly map, residual magnetic anomaly map and analytical signal map using Oasis montaji6.4 software for further interpretation. The result of this research has shown that the area is affected by different geological structures which may be the cause for the crack and the failure of the building in the area.