Research Labs

Prof.Dr. Nezihi CANITEZ Geophysical Data Processing Laboratory

Geophysical Data Processing Laboratory was established in 1996 under the sponsorship of DPT, TÜBİTAK, and MTA projects. This laboratory is the third one in Turkey following Turkish Petroleum Company and TÜBİTAK-MAM similar laboratories. ITU is one of the two universities in Turkey that owns such a facility. This laboratory serves to both graduate and undergraduate students.

Following the 1999 devastating Earthquakes in Marmara Region, this laboratory has assumed specialresponsibility of processing marine seismic and bathymetric data related to the active tectonics of the Marmara Sea.

Hardware profile in the Geophysical Data Processing Laboratory:

- SUN Ultra 1, 166 MHz CPU, 2x2 GB SCSI internal hard disc and 512 MB RAM with 2x80 Gb SCSI external hard discs and 21” color monitor.
- SUN Ultra 10, 166 MHz CPU, 140 GB IDE hard disc and 128 MB RAM with 21” color monitor.
- Two Intel based computers with 19” color monitor, 1GB MB RAM, Pentium-IV processor and 2x80 GB hard disc.
- Intel based computer, Pentium-IV processor, 1GB MB RAM, 1TrB hard disc (Server)
Uninterraptable Power Supply:
- Central unit of UPS power supply (5000 V/A)
Printing and Plotting facilities:
- 12” and 24” Atlantek thermal plotter for seismic data plotting
- HP DesignJet 250C A0-size, color plotter
- HP LazerJet 4500c color laser printer
- HP LazerJet gray scale printing
Data Exchange and Archiving facilities:
- HP DDS-2 DAT tape driver (x2)
- EXABYTE tape driver

Software profile in the Geophysical Data Processing Laboratory:

- Paradigm DISCO/FOCUS 2D (v. 5.0) Seismic Data Processing Package on SUN workstation: This industry standard seismic data processing package is open to undergraduate students during their graduating project study.
- Seismic Micro Technologies (SMT) Kingdom Suite Seismic Data Interpretation Package (v. 8.4): This industry standard seismic data interpretation package is open to undergraduate students during their graduating project study.
- Operating systems: SUN Solaris (v. 2.4.5) and Windows and Linux
- SUN Workshop Fortran/C compiler on SUN workstation
- Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) mapping software

We thank Schlumberger for donation of Petrel Geophysics module to our department.

We thank Schlumberger for donation of Petromod Software to our department.

We thank Emerson for donation of Echos Seismic Data Processing Software, Geodepth Migration and Velocity Modelling Software and ComprehensiveAttr Software to our department

We thank IHS Global Incorporation for donation of Kingdom Seismic and Geological Interpretation Software to our department.

We thank OGS (National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics, Italy) for donation of CAT3D, Seismic Reflection Tomography Software to our department.

We thank TPAO for installation and updating of Paradigm Echos Seismic Data Processing Software to our department.

Applied Geophysics Laboratory

The Applied Geophysics laboratory was established for the education of undergraduates and a storage place of geophysical instruments and their supplies. The field geophysics experiments have been carried out by using basic geophysical instruments belongs to this laboratory. The laboratory needs some new geophysical instruments such as 24-channel seismic recorder, gravimeter and ground penetrating radar. In addition, a large space for laboratory and spare parts of the existing geophysical instruments are necessary to achieve major geophysical engineering practices during the undergraduate education.

Palaeomagnetism Laboratory

The laboratory was established in 1973 by the joint work between the Faculty of Mines of the Istanbul Technical University and Kandilli Observatory and called “KANTEK”. The location of laboratory is in the campus of the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, Çengelköy. The main goal of this laboratory is to investigate the crustal and lithospheric scale movements in Turkey and surrounding area and understand the tectonic processes in the geologic
past by using the paleomagnetic rock samples.

Up to date, many research projects were run such as Rotation of Kırşehir Massif; Paleomagnetic properties of the Almancık Mountain; Investigation of neotectonic regime of the western Anatolia
and Thrace by the paleomagnetic studies; the neotectonic evaluation of the eastern edge of the Çankırı Basin. Also, this laboratory was used by the undergraduate students for the laboratory experiments required by their graduation project. Currently, the paleomagnetic experiments can be done on both volcanic and sedimentary rocks in the other institutes. However, the present instruments in KANTEK paleomagnetism laboratory are only appropriate for the experiments done on the volcanic rocks. Many geologic and tectonic problems can be solved by using modern instruments which are suitable for the experiments for the sedimentary rocks.

Seismology Laboratory

The undergraduate students can obtain the seismological data from the national (Kandilli Earthquake and Research Institute, KOERI, the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey, TUBİTAK et al.) and international institutions (USGS-NEIC, ISC, Harvard-CMT, IRIS, ORFEUS, ERI-Tokyo et al.). By using these compiled earthquake data catalogues and digital wave forms, the undergraduate students mainly work on the problems of seismotectonics and seismicity. There are a few seismological instruments (microtremor, strong motion, and broad-band 3 component seismometer) in the laboratory obtained from the research projects. The infrastructure of the laboratory was renewed.

Computational Geophysics Laboratory

A high performance computing system is delivered and the infrastucture studies are in progress. The project to establish this laboratory has been initiated by Dr. Ayşe Kaşlılar in 2008. The project is supported by Shell Co. and partly by ITU Scientific Research Funds. This initiative is appreciated by Dr. Özdoğan (Oz) Yılmaz, the CEO of Anatolian Geophysical Co., and he also donated a second high performance computing system to the laboratory. Both systems are specially designed for High-Performance Computational (HPC) tasks running under the Linux operating system.

This laboratory will be the first example in a Geophysical Engineering Department in Turkey. Both graduate and undergraduate students will benefit from this laboratory during 2D and 3D modeling of wave phenomena and code development for forward and inverse solutions in geophysics. Moreover, the laboratory will be used by other research groups studying subsurface imaging at scales ranging from meters to whole-Earth dimensions.

First system (delivered by Shell Company project):
- Hewlett Packard SMP Server DL580G5
- 4 x Intel Xeon 2.13 GHz Quad Core CPU
- 48 GB PC2-5300 RAM
- 4 x 300 GB 10K SAS HDD
- 24 Port Gigabit Ethetnet Switch