Phase Shift Modelling for HTI Media

By determining the pathways and volume of crustal fluid movement, fractures play an important role in hydrocarbon production. Horizontal transverse isotropy (HTI) is the simplest effective model of a formation that contain a single fracture system. We present phase shift modelling for an HTI medium, working in the plane wave domain for the sake of computational time and stability. First, in HTI media the wavefield is extrapolated from the source to reflecting plane by 3D anisotropic phase shift operator. Further, by following the dynamic and kinematic analysis of the extrapolated wavefield, it has been demonstrated that the amplitude and travel time of seismic waves are affected by the HTI medium. Since the information about the fracture system can be extracted from the three dimensional behavior of the shear wave splitting, the presented modelling will be contributive to fracture detection from the surface seismic data. Subsequently, this modelling will be applicable for VSP and micro-seismicity modelling in the presence of anisotropy.