Synthetic vertical seismic profiles in elastic media
Numerical simulations of vertical seismic profiles in flat‐layered elastic media using the discrete wavenumber method are presented. The effect of source‐borehole sep‐ aration on recorded wave types and amplitudes is studied. For nonzero source offsets, transverse and converted waves become very important and can be more energetic than the direct compressional arrivals. A systematic comparison of results from acoustic and elastic simulations shows that the acoustic approximation is quite valid for a zero source offset but becomes inadequate when the configuration of the source and vertical geo‐ phone array is two‐dimensional. Recording of both pressure and displacement allows a simple separation of transverse and compressional arrivals as long as the effect of the borehole on the incoming waves can be neglected.