Abstract: There is not a set of mature and effective method to measure formation quality factor by far. In this paper, a set of instruments and approaches are designed to measure quality factor, which can emulate the situation measured in different buried depth and water saturation condition, and measure the quality factor of unconsolidated sands or clay. Through testing many sands′samples from the Tarim and the Zhungar basin, the stability and the reliability of the instruments and the measuring technique are identified. The research discovers that compression wave quality factor of the sands in desert surface increases as the buried depth and the compression wave velocity′s increase. When the relative water content is smaller than a certain value, the quality factor increases as the water content′s decrease. After the relative water content reaches this value, the quality factor increases as the water content′s increase, which are of importance to the study of seismic wave energy loss and seismic data processing and interpretation.
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Key words: desert surface, quality factor measure, method through spectrum ratio, quality factor feature, Tarim basin