1887

Abstract

Summary

Computing first-arrival traveltimes in the presence of anisotropy is important for high-end near surface modeling, microseismic source localization, and fractured reservoir characterization. Anisotropy deviating from elliptical anisotropy introduces higher-order nonlinearity into the eikonal equation, which makes solving the equation a challenging task. We address this challenge by iteratively solving a sequence of simpler tilted elliptically anisotropic eikonal equations. At each iteration, the source function is updated to capture the effects due to the higher order nonlinear terms in the anisotropy. We use Aitken extrapolation to speed up the convergence rate of the iterative algorithm. The result is an efficient algorithm for first-arrival traveltime computations in tilted anisotropic media. We demonstrate the proposed method for the tilted transversely isotropic media and the tilted orthorhombic media. Numerical tests show that the proposed method is feasible and produces results that are comparable to wavefield extrapolation, even for strongly anisotropic and complex structures. Therefore, for the cases where one or two-point ray tracing fails, our method may be a potential substitute for computing traveltimes.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.20141196
2014-06-16
2024-11-05
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Al-Shuhail, A., Kaka, S.I. and Jervis, M.
    [2013] Enhancement of passive microseismic events using seismic interferometry. Seismological Research Letters, 84, 781–784.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Alkhalifah, T.
    [2003] An acoustic wave equation for orthorhombic anisotropy. Geophysics, 68(4), 1169–1172.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Atkinson, K.
    [1989] An Introduction to Numerical Analysis, New York: John Wiley & Sons.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Baofu, C., Dingyu, X., Xiaoqiao, R. and Chunhua, C.
    [2008] The first-arrival tomographic inversion and its application to identify thick near-surface structures. 78th SEG Annual Meeting, Expanded Abstracts, 3255–3259.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Ma, X. and Alkhalifah, T.
    [2013] qP wave traveltime computation by an iterative approach. 75th EAGE Conference & Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Taillandiez, C., Noble, M., Chauris, H. and Calandra, H.
    [2009] First-arrival traveltime tomography based on the adjoint-state method. Geophysics, 74, WCB57–WCB66.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.20141196
Loading
/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.20141196
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error