THREE-DIMENSIONAL GRAVITY MODELING IN ALL SPACE XIONG LI BHP Research – Melbourne Laboratories, P.O. Box 264, Clayton South, Victoria 3169, Australia E-mail:
[email protected] MICHEL CHOUTEAU Département de Génie Minéral, École Polytechnique de Montréal C. P. 6079, succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 3A7, Canada E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract. We review available analytical algorithms for the gravity effect and gravity gradients especially the vertical gravity gradient due to a right rectangular prism, a right polygonal prism, and a polyhedron. The emphasis is placed on an investigation of validity, consistency, and especially singularities of different algorithms, which have been traditionally proposed for calculation of the gravity effect on ground (or outside anomalous bodies), when they are applied to all points in space. The rounding error due to the computer floating point precision is estimated. The gravity effect and vertical gradient of gravity in three dimensions caused by a cubic model are calculated by different types of algorithms. The reliability of algorithms for the calculation of gravity of a right polygonal prism and a polyhedron is further verified by using a regular poly