Incorporating mechanisms of fluid pressure relaxation into inclusion‐based models of elastic wave velocities
Our new method incorporates fluid pressure communication into inclusion‐based models of elastic wave velocities in porous rocks by defining effective elastic moduli for fluid‐filled inclusions. We illustrate this approach with two models: (1) flow between nearest‐neighbor pairs of inclusions and (2) flow through a network of inclusions that communicates fluid pressure throughout a rock sample. In both models, we assume that pore pressure gradients induce laminar flow through narrow ducts, and we give expressions for the effective bulk moduli of inclusions. We compute P‐wave velocities and attenuation in a model sandstone and illustrate that the dependence on frequency and water‐saturation agrees qualitatively with laboratory data. We consider levels of water saturation from 0 to 100% and all wavelengths much larger than the scale of material heterogeneity, obtaining near‐exact agreement with Gassmann theory at low frequencies and exact agreement with inclusion‐based models at high frequencies.