Multipole logging in a formation with stress‐relief‐induced anisotropy

Geophysics ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 59 (12) ◽  
pp. 1806-1812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lasse Renlie

The stress relief associated with the drilling of a borehole may induce a mechanically damaged zone with radial transverse isotropy (RTI), where the properties in the radial direction differ from those in the axial and tangential directions. The effect of such a zone on multipole acoustic full‐waveform logging is investigated using a numerical model based on the frequency‐axial‐wavenumber method. Calculations of the spectral behavior show that the fundamental mode associated with the multipole source behaves the same way in an RTI zone as it does in a damaged zone with isotropic properties. In a slow virgin formation, calculations of full waveforms show that the presence of a damaged zone with RTI is more difficult to detect than a damaged zone with isotropic elasticity because the refracted P‐wave encounters an isotropic zone but not an RTI zone. The results indicate that a damaged zone with RTI, which is a precursor to destructive events such as borehole instability and sand production, can be detected only by analyzing the spectral behavior of the fundamental mode.

Geophysics ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 58 (9) ◽  
pp. 1257-1269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lasse Renlie ◽  
Arne M. Raaen

The stress relief associated with the drilling of a borehole may lead to an anisotropic formation in the vicinity of the borehole, where the properties in the radial direction differ from those in the axial and tangential directions. Thus, axial and radial compressional acoustic velocities are different, and similarly, the velocity of an axial shear‐wave depends on whether the polarization is radial or tangential. A model was developed to describe acoustic wave propagation in a borehole surrounded by a formation with stress‐relief‐induced radial transverse isotropy (RTI). Acoustic full waveforms due to a monopole source are computed using the real‐axis integration method, and dispersion relations are found by tracing poles in the [Formula: see text] plane. An analytic expression for the low‐frequency Stoneley wave is developed. The numerical results confirm the expectations that the compressional refraction is mainly given by the axial compressional velocity, while the shear refraction arrival is due to the shear wave with radial polarization. As a result, acoustic logging in an RTI formation, will indicate a higher [Formula: see text] ratio than that existing in the virgin formation. It also follows that the shear velocity may be a better indicator of a mechanically damaged zone near the borehole than the compressional velocity. The Stoneley‐wave velocity was found to decrease with the increasing degree of RTI.


Geophysics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (5) ◽  
pp. C175-C185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Pšenčík ◽  
Véronique Farra

We have developed approximate nonhyperbolic P-wave moveout formulas applicable to weakly or moderately anisotropic media of arbitrary anisotropy symmetry and orientation. Instead of the commonly used Taylor expansion of the square of the reflection traveltime in terms of the square of the offset, we expand the square of the reflection traveltime in terms of weak-anisotropy (WA) parameters. No acoustic approximation is used. We specify the formulas designed for anisotropy of arbitrary symmetry for the transversely isotropic (TI) media with the axis of symmetry oriented arbitrarily in the 3D space. Resulting formulas depend on three P-wave WA parameters specifying the TI symmetry and two angles specifying the orientation of the axis of symmetry. Tests of the accuracy of the more accurate of the approximate formulas indicate that maximum relative errors do not exceed 0.3% or 2.5% for weak or moderate P-wave anisotropy, respectively.


Geophysics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. D1-D11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaobo Zheng ◽  
Hengshan Hu

To seek measures to weaken the collar wave signals so that the formation arrivals are observable, it is important to make theoretical analysis of separate collar wave and formation arrivals in the acoustic logging-while-drilling environment. However, until now, the collar wave signal and the formation P- and S-arrivals have never been separately calculated. We have obtained individual component waves using the residue theorem and the branch-cut integral method, including residues at leaky poles. The waveform summed up from all individual waves is shown to agree well with the full waveform calculated by real-axis integration. In particular, the formation P-wave is obtained by summing the formation leaky mode and the compressional branch-cut integral for slow formations. The collar wave is found to propagate in the borehole and the formation as well as in the collar. Although the traveling speed of the collar wave is almost irrelevant to the formation, the attenuation and excitation spectrum of the collar wave are significantly affected by the formation, which reveals that an effective collar wave weakening design should be based on a model with the formation being taken into consideration.


Geophysics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-52
Author(s):  
Yuzhu Liu ◽  
Xinquan Huang ◽  
Jizhong Yang ◽  
Xueyi Liu ◽  
Bin Li ◽  
...  

Thin sand-mud-coal interbedded layers and multiples caused by shallow water pose great challenges to conventional 3D multi-channel seismic techniques used to detect the deeply buried reservoirs in the Qiuyue field. In 2017, a dense ocean-bottom seismometer (OBS) acquisition program acquired a four-component dataset in East China Sea. To delineate the deep reservoir structures in the Qiuyue field, we applied a full-waveform inversion (FWI) workflow to this dense four-component OBS dataset. After preprocessing, including receiver geometry correction, moveout correction, component rotation, and energy transformation from 3D to 2D, a preconditioned first-arrival traveltime tomography based on an improved scattering integral algorithm is applied to construct an initial P-wave velocity model. To eliminate the influence of the wavelet estimation process, a convolutional-wavefield-based objective function for the preprocessed hydrophone component is used during acoustic FWI. By inverting the waveforms associated with early arrivals, a relatively high-resolution underground P-wave velocity model is obtained, with updates at 2.0 km and 4.7 km depth. Initial S-wave velocity and density models are then constructed based on their prior relationships to the P-wave velocity, accompanied by a reciprocal source-independent elastic full-waveform inversion to refine both velocity models. Compared to a traditional workflow, guided by stacking velocity analysis or migration velocity analysis, and using only the pressure component or other single-component, the workflow presented in this study represents a good approach for inverting the four-component OBS dataset to characterize sub-seafloor velocity structures.


2020 ◽  
Vol 222 (2) ◽  
pp. 1164-1177
Author(s):  
Nikolaos Athanasopoulos ◽  
Edgar Manukyan ◽  
Thomas Bohlen ◽  
Hansruedi Maurer

SUMMARY Full-waveform inversion of shallow seismic wavefields is a promising method to infer multiparameter models of elastic material properties (S-wave velocity, P-wave velocity and mass density) of the shallow subsurface with high resolution. Previous studies used either the refracted Pwaves to reconstructed models of P-wave velocity or the high-amplitude Rayleigh waves to infer the S-wave velocity structure. In this work, we propose a combination of both wavefields using continuous time–frequency windowing. We start with the contribution of refracted P waves and gradually increase the time window to account for scattered body waves, higher mode Rayleigh waves and finally the fundamental Rayleigh wave mode. The opening of the time window is combined with opening the frequency bandwidth of input signals to avoid cycle skipping. Synthetic reconstruction tests revealed that the reconstruction of P-wave velocity model and mass density can be improved. The S-wave velocity reconstruction is still accurate and robust and is slightly benefitted by time–frequency windowing. In a field data application, we observed that time–frequency windowing improves the consistency of multiparameter models. The inferred models are in good agreement with independent geophysical information obtained from ground-penetrating radar and full-waveform inversion of SH waves.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clàudia Gras ◽  
Valentí Sallarès ◽  
Daniel Dagnino ◽  
C. Estela Jiménez ◽  
Adrià Meléndez ◽  
...  

Abstract. We present a high-resolution P-wave velocity model of the sedimentary cover and the uppermost basement until ~ 3 km depth obtained by full-waveform inversion of multichannel seismic data acquired with a 6 km-long streamer in the Alboran Sea (SE Iberia). The inherent non-linearity of the method, especially for short-offset, band-limited seismic data as this one, is circumvented by applying a data processing/modeling sequence consisting of three steps: (1) data re-datuming by back-propagation of the recorded seismograms to the seafloor; (2) joint refraction and reflection travel-time tomography combining the original and the re-datumed shot gathers; and (3) FWI of the original shot gathers using the model obtained by travel-time tomography as initial reference. The final velocity model shows a number of geological structures that cannot be identified in the travel-time tomography models or easily interpreted from seismic reflection images alone. A sharp strong velocity contrast accurately defines the geometry of the top of the basement. Several low-velocity zones that may correspond to the abrupt velocity change across steeply dipping normal faults are observed at the flanks of the basin. A 200–300 m thick, high-velocity layer embedded within lower velocity sediment may correspond to evaporites deposited during the Messinian crisis. The results confirm that the combination of data re-datuming and joint refraction and reflection travel-time inversion provides reference models that are accurate enough to apply full-waveform inversion to relatively short offset streamer data in deep water settings starting at field-data standard low frequency content of 6 Hz.


Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (5) ◽  
pp. B335-B351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenyong Pan ◽  
Kristopher A. Innanen

Viscoelastic full-waveform inversion is applied to walk-away vertical seismic profile data acquired at a producing heavy-oil field in Western Canada for the determination of subsurface velocity models (P-wave velocity [Formula: see text] and S-wave velocity [Formula: see text]) and attenuation models (P-wave quality factor [Formula: see text] and S-wave quality factor [Formula: see text]). To mitigate strong velocity-attenuation trade-offs, a two-stage approach is adopted. In Stage I, [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] models are first inverted using a standard waveform-difference (WD) misfit function. Following this, in Stage II, different amplitude-based misfit functions are used to estimate the [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] models. Compared to the traditional WD misfit function, the amplitude-based misfit functions exhibit stronger sensitivity to attenuation anomalies and appear to be able to invert [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] models more reliably in the presence of velocity errors. Overall, the root-mean-square amplitude-ratio and spectral amplitude-ratio misfit functions outperform other misfit function choices. In the final outputs of our inversion, significant drops in the [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text] ratio (~1.6) and Poisson’s ratio (~0.23) are apparent within the Clearwater Formation (depth ~0.45–0.50 km) of the Mannville Group in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. Strong [Formula: see text] (~20) and [Formula: see text] (~15) anomalies are also evident in this zone. These observations provide information to help identify the target attenuative reservoir saturated with heavy-oil resources.


Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. R271-R293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno V. da Silva ◽  
Gang Yao ◽  
Michael Warner

Full-waveform inversion deals with estimating physical properties of the earth’s subsurface by matching simulated to recorded seismic data. Intrinsic attenuation in the medium leads to the dispersion of propagating waves and the absorption of energy — media with this type of rheology are not perfectly elastic. Accounting for that effect is necessary to simulate wave propagation in realistic geologic media, leading to the need to estimate intrinsic attenuation from the seismic data. That increases the complexity of the constitutive laws leading to additional issues related to the ill-posed nature of the inverse problem. In particular, the joint estimation of several physical properties increases the null space of the parameter space, leading to a larger domain of ambiguity and increasing the number of different models that can equally well explain the data. We have evaluated a method for the joint inversion of velocity and intrinsic attenuation using semiglobal inversion; this combines quantum particle-swarm optimization for the estimation of the intrinsic attenuation with nested gradient-descent iterations for the estimation of the P-wave velocity. This approach takes advantage of the fact that some physical properties, and in particular the intrinsic attenuation, can be represented using a reduced basis, substantially decreasing the dimension of the search space. We determine the feasibility of the method and its robustness to ambiguity with 2D synthetic examples. The 3D inversion of a field data set for a geologic medium with transversely isotropic anisotropy in velocity indicates the feasibility of the method for inverting large-scale real seismic data and improving the data fitting. The principal benefits of the semiglobal multiparameter inversion are the recovery of the intrinsic attenuation from the data and the recovery of the true undispersed infinite-frequency P-wave velocity, while mitigating ambiguity between the estimated parameters.


Geophysics ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
pp. 75A15-75A29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilya Tsvankin ◽  
James Gaiser ◽  
Vladimir Grechka ◽  
Mirko van der Baan ◽  
Leon Thomsen

Recent advances in parameter estimation and seismic processing have allowed incorporation of anisotropic models into a wide range of seismic methods. In particular, vertical and tilted transverse isotropy are currently treated as an integral part of velocity fields employed in prestack depth migration algorithms, especially those based on the wave equation. We briefly review the state of the art in modeling, processing, and inversion of seismic data for anisotropic media. Topics include optimal parameterization, body-wave modeling methods, P-wave velocity analysis and imaging, processing in the [Formula: see text] domain, anisotropy estimation from vertical-seismic-profiling (VSP) surveys, moveout inversion of wide-azimuth data, amplitude-variation-with-offset (AVO) analysis, processing and applications of shear and mode-converted waves, and fracture characterization. When outlining future trends in anisotropy studies, we emphasize that continued progress in data-acquisition technology is likely to spur transition from transverse isotropy to lower anisotropic symmetries (e.g., orthorhombic). Further development of inversion and processing methods for such realistic anisotropic models should facilitate effective application of anisotropy parameters in lithology discrimination, fracture detection, and time-lapse seismology.


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