TSINGHUA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

ISSNll1007-0214ll05/17llpp281-287
Volume 15, Number 3, June 2010

Approximating Nonlinear Relations Between Susceptibility and

Magnetic Contents in Rocks Using Neural Networks
William W Guo**, Michael Li, Zhengxiang Li, Greg Whymark
Faculty of Arts, Business, Informatics and Education, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton QLD 4701, Australia;
The Institute for Geoscience Research (TIGeR), Curtin University of Technology, Perth WA 6845, Australia
Abstract: Correlations between magnetic susceptibility and contents of magnetic minerals in rocks are important in interpreting magnetic anomalies in geophysical exploration and understanding magnetic behaviors of rocks in rock magnetism studies. Previous studies were focused on describing such correlations using a sole expression or a set of expressions through statistical analysis. In this paper, we use neural network techniques to approximate the nonlinear relations between susceptibility and magnetite and/or hematite contents in rocks. This is the first time that neural networks are used for such study in rock magnetism
and magnetic petrophysics. Three multilayer perceptrons are trained for producing the best possible estimation on susceptibility based on magnetic contents. These trained models are capable of producing accurate
mappings between susceptibility and magnetite and/or hematite contents in rocks. This approach opens a
new way of quantitative simulation using neural networks in rock magnetism and petrophysical research and
applications.
Key words: neural networks; nonlinear function approximation; rock magnetism; magnetic susceptibility;
magnetic contents

Introduction
Magnetism of a rock depends on the magnetic minerals
that the rock contains. Usually magnetic properties of a
rock are determined by ferromagnetic minerals if they
are present. Magnetite and hematite are the most
common ferromagnetic minerals in rocks. For example,
magnetite and hematite often form some 5% by weight
of igneous and metamorphic rocks, and are present in
many sedimentary rocks with various fractions[1]. Although many factors, such as grain size of magnetic
minerals, may affect magnetic properties of a rock, the
content of magnetic minerals in a rock is the predominate factor.
Received: 2010-04-13; revised: 2010-05-08

** To whom correspondence should be addressed.

E-mail: w.guo@cqu.edu.au; Tel: 61-7-49309687

Great effort has been made in understanding the relations between magnetic properties (particularly
magnetic susceptibility) and the content of magnetite
or hematite for the purposes of interpreting magnetic
anomalies[2-5] and rock magnetism study[1], and a few
statistical correlations between susceptibility and
magnetite content have been reported in some of these
studies. However, most results of magnetite content
used in these early studies were determined by magnetic separation plus chemical analysis[2-4] or microscopic grain counting[5]. These methods used in these
early studies, compared with the lately used analysis
techniques, are far less accurate. Currently, the more
accurate X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis is widely
used to determine magnetic contents in rocks. Therefore, to couple magnetic susceptibility with magnetic
contents obtained from XRD analysis, there is a need
to establish new correlations between susceptibility

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and weight percentage of magnetite and/or hematite in

rocks.
In practice, susceptibility data are relatively easier
and cheaper to obtain in the laboratory. However, XRD
analysis is more expensive and thus is only applied to
some selected samples. Making XRD data availability
even worse is that most XRD analysis is financially
supported by industry partners who usually impose
some restrictions on data release. This could partly be
the reason why only a very few new studies in this area
have been reported in the last two decades[6,7].
The magnetic susceptibility and XRD data used in
this study were collected in a petrophysical study partly supported by three mining companies during 19951999[6]. This study showed that for rocks containing
magnetite less than 0.5% by weight, an exponential
correlation exists between susceptibility and weight
percent of hematite. Magnetite dominates susceptibility of rocks in power law if the rocks contain magnetite
higher than 0.5% by weight. These data were reanalyzed using a statistical data mining approach[7], which
revealed that the nonlinearity of correlation between
susceptibility and magnetite could not be sufficiently
described using one single expression; instead, segmentation-based multiple fittings seemed more useful.
This complexity of nonlinear relations between susceptibility and magnetic contents implies that new
strategies, different from the traditional philosophy that
a correlation could be described by a sole expression or
a set of expressions through statistical analysis, must
be adopted in dealing with the approximation of such
nonlinearity.
In this paper, neural network techniques are used for
approximating nonlinear relations between magnetic
susceptibility and contents of magnetic minerals in
rocks. This study focuses on training a dynamic neural
network for producing the best possible estimation on
susceptibility with respect to the given magnetic contents, rather than finding a general expression for describing such a correlation. This is an innovative application of neural networks in rock magnetism and
magnetic petrophysics.
In the following sections, we briefly introduce the
process of collection, preprocessing, and classification
of the rock magnetic data used for our study, and then
present the mathematical description of this nonlinear
problem. Following is the outline of the processes for
neural network model selection, training, and testing

Tsinghua Science and Technology, June 2010, 15(3): 281-287

using these classified data. At last discussion and conclusion are drawn based on the outcomes of the neural
network simulation.

Data Collection, Preprocessing,

and Classification

A total of 573 rock samples were collected from 114

sites in the northwest of Western Australia. Typically
six to nine standard specimens were extracted from
each rock sample. Magnetic susceptibility of all specimens was measured individually, which returns more
than 3000 susceptibility datasets. Since XRD analysis
is expensive, only 43 composite samples were selected
for XRD analysis. Each composite sample was made
of a few small rock pieces taken from the same rock
sample so as to minimize the bias to a particular specimen. This is necessary because magnetic minerals
are normally distributed unevenly in a rock and even in
a rock sample. The composite sample was then crushed
to fine grains for XRD analysis. Both magnetic susceptibility measurement and XRD analysis were carried out in the laboratories at The University of Western Australia.
Magnetite and hematite were found to be the main
carriers of magnetism in these samples. Nearly 300
susceptibility measurements can be mapped to the 43
XRD samples due to the fact that multiple specimens
can be mapped to the same rock sample. These
one-to-many mappings must be rationalized before
data analysis takes place. The simplest way to do so is
to use the average susceptibility from all specimens
taken from the same rock sample. This should give 43
one-to-one mappings between magnetic content and
susceptibility. These 43 mappings are probably sufficient for statistical data analysis, which were indeed
used in the previous studies[6,7].
It is obvious that these 43 mappings are not sufficient for training a reliable neural network. Instead of
directly using the average susceptibility from all specimens of the same rock sample, the magnetic contents
from an XRD sample can be redistributed to individual
specimen through its susceptibility based on the following formula
sij c j
cij
(1)
sj
where cj is the magnetic content of j-th XRD sample; sj

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William W Guo et al.Approximating Nonlinear Magnetic Relations

is the average susceptibility of all specimens from the

j-th corresponding rock sample; sij is the susceptibility
of the i-th specimen from the j-th rock sample; cij is the
redistributed magnetic content to the i-th specimen
from the j-th XRD sample. Such redistribution produces about 300 new mappings.
These new mappings are further classified into three
subclasses: magnetite-susceptibility (Mag-Sus), hematite-susceptibility (Hem-Sus) whilst magnetite is less
than 0.5%, and magnetite-hematite-susceptibility
(Mag/Hem-Sus) whilst both magnetite and hematite
are present. This classification is based on the findings
of the previous statistical analysis[6]. A summary of
these subclasses is shown in Table 1. The splitting of
these mappings for both neural network training and
testing is kept at a ratio of about 83% to 17%.
Table 1 Classifications of susceptibility and magnetic
content mappings
Subclass
Mag-Sus

Mappings

Training size

Testing size

239

202 (82%)

37 (18%)

Hem-Sus

268

231 (84%)

37 (16%)

Mag/Hem-Sus

144

123 (83%)

21 (17%)

Problem Description

Previous studies have revealed some correlations between magnetic contents and susceptibility in rocks
and ores[2-4,6,7], but they only indicate the general
trends between susceptibility and magnetic contents. In
summary, the following knowledge has been discovered in these studies.
A power law seems to exist between susceptibility (s)
and magnetite content (m) when magnetite is higher
than 0.5% by weight in rocks[2-4,6,7], i.e.,
s amb
(2)
where a and b are statistical constants depending on
datasets used.
For rocks containing magnetite less than 0.5% by
weight, an exponential correlation seems to exist between susceptibility and hematite (h) content[6], i.e.,
s cd h
(3)
where c and d are statistical constants depending on
datasets used.
Since magnetite and hematite are the most common
and persistent magnetic minerals in rocks, susceptibility of rocks is largely determined by the composition
of these two minerals contained. For a general case

where both magnetite and hematite are present in rocks,

a logical inference for such a relation would lead to the
following expression:
s amb  cd h  ef (m, h)
(4)
where e is another data-dependable constant and f(m, h)
is an unknown function depending on both magnetite
and hematite contents.
These relations are all nonlinear and data-dependable functions without unique solutions. The best effort
to get a usable solution is through approximation using
a collection of data for a particular case. Statistical approximation has been proven too course for the purpose of simulation in magnetic petrophysics[6,7] so new
approaches are needed to achieve a better approximation for such purpose.

3 Approximating Nonlinear
Relations by Neural Networks
3.1

Neural network model selection

The core of a neural network is actually an adaptive

mathematical model that is capable of approximating
any arbitrary unknown function constrained by training
datasets. It has been proven that a three-layer multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network can approximate any continuous function mapped from one finite-dimensional space to another by adjusting the
number of nodes in the hidden layer[8]. The structure of
a three-layer MLP with a hidden layer of L nodes, a
p-dimensional input vector x, and a q-dimensional
output vector y is illustrated in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 Three-layer MLP

The relationship between the input and output components for this MLP can be generally expressed as
L

(5)
yk I w2, kj\  w1, ji xi 
j1

where M and \ are the transfer functions; w1, ji denotes

the input-to-hidden layer weights at the hidden neuron

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j; and w2, kj is the hidden-to-output layer weights at the

output unit k.
Despite this generalized formula, the outcome of the
MLPs is a set of numerical values, rather than an analytical formula like that resulting from statistical analysis should it exist. If the network is well trained, the
MLP only returns the closest approximated values in
response to new input data.
For our problem, the single output of such an MLP
is obviously susceptibility, but the input varies with
different magnetic minerals. We will use not only a
single input vector of either magnetite or hematite for
approximating 2-D correlations between susceptibility
and either mineral, but also two input vectors of both
magnetite and hematite for approaching 3-D correlation between both minerals and susceptibility that has
not been reported in the world by now.
Although a single hidden layer is technically sufficient for achieving satisfactory approximation[8,9],
there has been no universal rule for selecting the number of nodes in the hidden layer even though some
simple rules of thumb have been proposed[10]. Hence
such selection is determined by running a number of
experiments for individual cases, or the practitioners
strategy[11].
3.2

Neural network training

The neural network process involves two phases:

training the network with known datasets and testing
the trained network using different known datasets for
model generalization. Normally a performance function is used to control the network training process. A
good reference to performance functions commonly
used for controlling neural network training is given by
Qi and Zhang[12].
Mean square error (MSE) is chosen as the performance function to control the process of neural network
training in this study
1 N
MSE
( so (t )  ss (t ))2
(6)

N t1

where so and ss are original and simulated values,

respectively.
We also choose the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM)
algorithm[13] to train the selected MLPs because this
algorithm has been reported to be the fastest method
for training moderate-sized feedforward neural
networks[14,15]. For the LM algorithm, weights (w) are

Tsinghua Science and Technology, June 2010, 15(3): 281-287

updated according to the following formula

wij (t+1) = wij(t) + 'wij(t)
(7)
with
wij = (J TJ + I)1J Te
(8)
where J is the Jacobian matrix containing first derivatives of the network errors with respect to the weights,
and e is a vector of network errors. The LM algorithm
was designed to approach second-order training speed
without having to compute the Hessian matrix
H=J TJ
(9)
Therefore, it is faster than Newtons and the gradient
methods in computing. A detailed description of the
LM algorithm can be found in Marquardt[13], Hagan
and Menhaj[14], and Hagan et al.[15]
3.3

Training and testing results

The datasets are split randomly into training and testing subsets which are approximately at a ratio of 83%
to 17% in general. The details are given in Table 1. Our
MLP models are built using the neural network tools in
MATLAB[16,17].
The training of three-layer MLPs is based on running a number of experiments for datasets in different
subclasses. These experiments indicate that there is no
significant difference between the logsig-linear and
tansig-linear combinations as the transfer functions for
the hidden and output layers respectively. Therefore,
the tansig-linear combination is chosen as the transfer
functions for our MLPs. Assuming that an MSE
smaller than 0.0001 indicates a good fit being achieved,
experiments using hidden layers of 25, 50, 80, 100,
150, 200, and 250 nodes show that a hidden layer with
80 nodes can achieve the target MSE within 10 epochs
(Fig. 2) and produce the most balanced outcome, i.e.,
neither under-fit nor over-fit. Therefore, the outcomes
of a hidden layer of 80 nodes will be used for our discussion later. Other neighboring MLPs also produce
satisfactory outcomes that are shown in Table 2 for
comparison.
The 80-neuron MLPs return consistently satisfactory
results for all three subclasses in terms of both the
mean absolute error (MAE) and the maximum error
(Max) (Table 3). Among the three subclasses, both
Mag-Sus and Mag/Hem-Sus return almost a perfect
correlation between the targets and simulated data
whereas Hem-Sus shows a trend of underestimating
the targets at the higher end (Fig. 3). These features are

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William W Guo et al.Approximating Nonlinear Magnetic Relations

demonstrated clearly in Fig. 4, in which the fittings of

both Mag-Sus and Mag/Hem-Sus are intuitively perfect whereas the simulated values are mostly smaller
than the targets for the Hem-Sus model.

(a) Mag-Sus

(a) Mag-Sus

(b) Hem-Sus
(b) Hem-Sus

(c) Mag/Hem-Sus
(c) Mag/Hem-Sus
Fig. 2 Training curves for Mag-Sus (a), Hem-Sus (b)
and Mag/Hem-Sus (c) subclasses with 80-node hidden-layer MLPs

Fig. 3 Linear regression between the targets (T) and

simulated outcomes (S) with 80-node hidden-layer
MLPs for Mag-Sus (a), Hem-Sus (b), and
Mag/Hem-Sus (c) subclasses

Tsinghua Science and Technology, June 2010, 15(3): 281-287

286

(a)

(b)

(c)
Fig. 4 Plots of targets and simulated outcomes with
80-node hidden-layer MLPs for samples of Mag-Sus
(a), Hem-Sus (b), and Mag/Hem-Sus (c) subclasses
Table 2
Subclass

MLP training results

MSE

50 nodes

80 nodes

6.310

5

5.110

5

3.6105

Hem-Sus

2.710

7

2.310

7

2.1107

Mag/Hem-Sus

1.4106

1.8107

1.1109

Mag-Sus

Table 3

100 nodes

Testing results of the 80-node hidden-layer MLPs

Subclass

Discussion and Conclusions

All three MLPs produce satisfactory approximations to

nonlinear functions between the contents of magnetic
minerals and the susceptibility in rocks. These trained
neural networks are capable of producing accurate
mappings between susceptibility and magnetite and/or
hematite contents in rocks. Such quantitative simulation provided by the MLP models opens a new way in
rock magnetism and petrophysical research and applications. This cannot be achieved by using statistical
methods because the statistical correlations only offer
qualitative trends between the factors[6,7]. However, the
role that statistics played is still important in discovering general patterns among the relevant factors, which
can be hardly provided by neural networks. For example, statistical analysis has shown that an exponential
correlation seems to exist between susceptibility and
hematite content for rocks containing magnetite less
than 0.5% by weight[6]. Such knowledge provides a
general guide for researchers to interpret and better
understand some magnetic phenomena in rock magnetism even though this rule is too coarse for producing a reliable susceptibility value. On the contrary, the
MLP models can produce accurate simulations, but
offer no general description of the hidden nonlinear
functions.
For the single input MLPs, the Mag-Sus model performs much better than the Hem-Sus model. This may
be attributed to the fact that magnetite is far more
magnetic than any other minerals in rocks so its presence with more than 0.5% by weight will see it dominate other minerals in magnetism, particularly hematite.
On the other hand, a trace of magnetite, even too small
to be detected by XFD, could still make a non-negligible contribution to the magnetism of a hematitedominated rock. This brings some deflection in the
training of the Hem-Sus MLP, which results in a general underestimation on susceptibility by hematite
alone. Undoubtedly the best outcome is achieved by
combining the two inputs together for training the
neural networks.

MAE

Max

Correlation

Mag-Sus

0.0053

0.0350

0.998

Hem-Sus

0.0002

0.0008

0.901

The Commonwealth Government of Australia and The Univer-

Mag/Hem-Sus

0.0000

0.0000

1.000

sity of Western Australia are thanked for supporting this re-

Acknowledgements

search through scholarship schemes. The Hamersley Iron Pty

William W Guo et al.Approximating Nonlinear Magnetic Relations

Ltd, BHP Iron Ore, and Robe River Iron Association are
thanked for the financial and field assistance.

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