Method for simultaneous measurement of borehole and formation neutron decay-times employing iterative fitting

A method is described of making in situ measurements of the thermal neutron decay time of earth formations in the vicinity of a wellbore. The borehole and earth formations in its vicinity are repetitively irradiated with pulsed fast neutrons and, during the intervals between pulses, capture gamma radiation is measured in at least four, non-overlapping, contiguous time intervals. A background radiation measurement is made between successive pulses and used to correct count-rates representative of thermal neutron populations in the borehole and the formations, the count-rates being generated during each of the time intervals. The background-corrected count-rate measurements are iteratively fitted to exponential curves using a least squares technique to simultaneously derive signals representing borehole component and formation component of the thermal neutron decay time. The signals are recorded as a function of borehole depth. (author)