Gravitational attraction of a rectangular prism with depth‐dependent density

Abstract

The gravity effect produced by two and three‐dimensional bodies with nonuniform density contrast has been treated by several authors. One of the first attempts in this direction made by Cordell (1973), who developed a method to compute the gravity effect due to a two‐dimensional prism whose density decreases exponentially with depth. A different approach was proposed by Murthy and Rao (1979). They extended the line‐integral method to obtain the gravity effect for bodies of arbitrary cross‐sections, with density contrast varying linearly with depth. Chai and Hinze (1988) have derived a wavenumber‐domain approach to compute the gravity effect due to a vertical prism whose density contrast varies exponentially with depth. Recently, Rao (1990) has developed a closed expression of the gravity field produced by an asymmetrical trapezoidal body whose density varies with depth following a quadratic polynomial.