Geophysical Methods to Improve Productivity of a Marble Quarry

Marble is probably the most popular ornamental stone in the world. Technological evolution in the extraction techniques resulted in significant improvements with regard to productivity and quality of the commercial blocks. In order to improve productivity, through the early detection of fractures in the cutting procedure, geophysical methods like GPR, EM and ERT have been tested in “Dionyssos” quarry with its famous worldwide marbles which have been used for Acropolis of Athens construction. GPR method is in its favorable environment to see ahead and identify regions with or without cracks with the suggested processing resulting to sections easily understood by engineers. ERT method can lithologically identify the medium with the only problem the high electrode contact resistance while EM method is fast and cheap giving though less information.