Ying Rao

Fracture effects in seismic attenuation images reconstructed by waveform tomography

We have investigated seismic waveform tomography to characterize fractures in petroleum reservoirs. Seismic reflection data are used in a frequency-domain inversion to reconstruct subsurface attenuation images. The images show fracture distributions, from which fracture density is estimated. Fractures smaller than or equal to a half-wavelength of seismic act as single scatterers, producing images of strong attenuation ellipses and from which fracture density can be estimated. When fracture size approaches one wavelength, fracture orientation affects the attenuation image. Horizontal fractures act as individual reflectors and produce strong tomographic attenuation images from which fracture density can be estimated. The strength of the attenuation image decreases when the fracture angle relative to horizontal increases; vertical fractures produce the weakest attenuation image. Consequently, the accuracy of fracture density measurements decreases with increased fracture angle unless waveform tomography incl...

Crosshole seismic tomography: working solutions to issues in real data travel time inversion

In travel time inversion of crosshole seismic tomography, when dealing with real data, the following three issues need to be addressed: how to suppress the effect of data errors, how to balance the data contribution and reference model, and how to properly set the geological constraints (well logs) in an inversion. Signal-to-noise ratios of travel time data picked from real crosshole seismic surveys likely depend on the vertical offset between a source and a receiver, since the overall attenuation will typically be greater for a longer ray path. Therefore, to suppress the effect of data errors in a least-squares solution, a data confidence matrix is used in practice where the weighting is set logically based on the vertical offset. When a model constraint is adopted in the inversion to seek a solution with least deviation from some prescribed background that is most likely to have no spurious structure, a trade-off parameter is used to explicitly balance the dependence of the inversion solution to the data contribution and the reference model. The latter is built by combining sonic logging information, which is hard geological evidence at the vicinity of wells, and an initial estimate from the travel time back-projection, a preliminary solution of the travel time tomography. Geological constraints are set so that the inversion solution should have the least deviation from the hard geological evidence, and more deviation for the remaining part of the survey region, since the true velocity model might differ from such an initial estimate and the true ray paths might deviate from the initial ray paths.

Seismic signatures of carbonate caves affected by near-surface absorptions

The near-surface absorption within a low-velocity zone generally has an exponential attenuation effect on seismic waves. But how does this absorption affect seismic signatures of karstic caves in deep carbonate reservoirs? Seismic simulation and analysis reveals that, although this near-surface absorption attenuates the wave energy of a continuous reflection, it does not alter the basic kinematic shape of bead-string reflections, a special seismic characteristic associated with carbonate caves in the Tarim Basin, China. Therefore, the bead-strings in seismic profiles can be utilized, with a great certainty, for interpreting the existence of caves within the deep carbonate reservoirs and for evaluating their pore spaces. Nevertheless, the difference between the central frequency and the peak frequency is increased along with the increment in the absorption. While the wave energy of bead-string reflections remains strong, due to the interference of seismic multiples generated by big impedance contrast between the infill materials of a cave and the surrounding carbonate rocks, the central frequency is shifted linearly with respect to the near-surface absorption. These two features can be exploited simultaneously, for a stable attenuation analysis of field seismic data.

Crosshole seismic tomography including the anisotropy effect

Velocity anisotropy caused by fine layering has a strong effect on the travel paths at large vertical offsets in crosshole seismic data. This effect must be considered in seismic waveform tomography, so that the inversion procedure can match the waveforms in real data. In this paper, we propose to properly take into account this anisotropic effect in two stages. First, we invert for the anisotropy parameter simultaneously with the (horizontal) velocity in travel time tomography. Then we incorporate this estimated anisotropy parameter model in the waveform simulation during waveform tomography, to refine the velocity image. When considering this anisotropic effect, far-offset data are properly used in the inversion, then both travel time and waveform tomography may have a better ray coverage, producing a velocity image with a higher resolution.

The Strategies for Attenuation Inversion with Waveform Tomography

In this paper, we compare two attenuation inversion strategies used in waveform tomography. The first strategy is a two-steps scheme: inverting velocity model and fixing attenuation model (1/Q) first, then with fixed velocity model to invert the attenuation model. Another strategy is to invert for these two models simultaneously. Although there are no big differences in synthetic data test, because the trade-off between update of the velocity and the attenuation factor is very sensitive to noise, there are big differences in real data tests. The first strategy can successfully avoid cross contamination of the velocity and attenuation fields. We also use curved layer perturbation tests to verify the high attenuation layer in the final attenuation model.

Seismic attenuation in fractured media

The prime objective of this paper is to quantitatively estimate seismic attenuation caused by fractures with different physical parameters. In seismic wave simulation, the fractured media are treated as the anisotropic media and fractures are represented by frequency-dependent elastic constants. Based on numerical experiments with three different parameters, namely viscosity, porosity and the Lame parameters, this paper has the following observations. First, seismic attenuation is not affected by the viscosity within fractures, although it increases with the increase of porosity and decreases with the increase of the Lame parameters within fractures. Among the latter two parameters, seismic attenuation is more sensitive to the Lame parameters than to the porosity. Second, for the attenuation anisotropy, low frequencies have more anisotropic effect than high frequencies. For example, a 50 Hz wavefield has the strongest anisotropy effect if compared to 100 and 150 Hz wavefields. The attenuation anisotropy for low frequency (say 50 Hz) is more sensitive to the viscosity than the porosity and the Lame parameters have the weakest effect among these three parameters. These observations suggest that low-frequency seismic attenuation, and especially the attenuation anisotropy in low frequency, would have great potential for fluid discrimination within fractured media.

Reflection seismic waveform tomography of physical modelling data

Waveform tomography is commonly tested using numerically generated synthetic seismic data, before the method is applied to field seismic data. However, there are often noticeable differences between idealized synthetic data and real field data, and many factors in the field data, such as noise, irregular source/receiver geometry, affect the inversion solutions. For exploring the potential of reflection seismic waveform tomography, we presented a more realistic test than the synthetic data test, by applying it to physical modelling data, to reconstruct a laboratorial model with complex velocity variation. First, we provided a formulation of the perfectly matched layer absorbing boundary condition, associated with the second-order acoustic wave equation, in order to suppress artificial reflections from subsurface model boundaries in seismic waveform simulation and tomography. Then, we demonstrated the successful implementation of a layer-striping inversion scheme applicable to reflection seismic waveform tomography. Finally, we confirmed the effectiveness of frequency grouping, rather than a single frequency at each iteration, a strategy specifically for the frequency-domain waveform tomography.

Seismic waveform tomography with shot-encoding using a restarted L-BFGS algorithm

In seismic waveform tomography, or full-waveform inversion (FWI), one effective strategy used to reduce the computational cost is shot-encoding, which encodes all shots randomly and sums them into one super shot to significantly reduce the number of wavefield simulations in the inversion. However, this process will induce instability in the iterative inversion regardless of whether it uses a robust limited-memory BFGS (L-BFGS) algorithm. The restarted L-BFGS algorithm proposed here is both stable and efficient. This breakthrough ensures, for the first time, the applicability of advanced FWI methods to three-dimensional seismic field data. In a standard L-BFGS algorithm, if the shot-encoding remains unchanged, it will generate a crosstalk effect between different shots. This crosstalk effect can only be suppressed by employing sufficient randomness in the shot-encoding. Therefore, the implementation of the L-BFGS algorithm is restarted at every segment. Each segment consists of a number of iterations; the first few iterations use an invariant encoding, while the remainder use random re-coding. This restarted L-BFGS algorithm balances the computational efficiency of shot-encoding, the convergence stability of the L-BFGS algorithm, and the inversion quality characteristic of random encoding in FWI.

VSP wave separation by adaptive masking filters

In vertical seismic profiling (VSP) data processing, the first step might be to separate the down-going wavefield from the up-going wavefield. When using a masking filter for VSP wave separation, there are difficulties associated with two termination ends of the up-going waves. A critical challenge is how the masking filter can restore the energy tails, the edge effect associated with these terminations uniquely exist in VSP data. An effective strategy is to implement masking filters in both τ-p and f-k domain sequentially. Meanwhile it uses a median filter, producing a clean but smooth version of the down-going wavefield, used as a reference data set for designing the masking filter. The masking filter is implemented adaptively and iteratively, gradually restoring the energy tails cut-out by any surgical mute. While the τ-p and the f-k domain masking filters target different depth ranges of VSP, this combination strategy can accurately perform in wave separation from field VSP data.

Seismic waveform simulation for models with fluctuating interfaces

The contrast of elastic properties across a subsurface interface imposes a dominant influence on the seismic wavefield, which includes transmitted and reflected waves from the interface. Therefore, for an accurate waveform simulation, it is necessary to have an accurate representation of the subsurface interfaces within the numerical model. Accordingly, body-fitted gridding is used to partition subsurface models so that the grids coincide well with both the irregular surface and fluctuating interfaces of the Earth. However, non-rectangular meshes inevitably exist across fluctuating interfaces. This non-orthogonality degrades the accuracy of the waveform simulation when using a conventional finite-difference method. Here, we find that a summation-by-parts (SBP) finite-difference method can be used for models with non-rectangular meshes across fluctuating interfaces, and can achieve desirable simulation accuracy. The acute angle of non-rectangular meshes can be relaxed to as low as 47°. The cell size rate of change between neighbouring grids can be relaxed to as much as 30%. Because the non-orthogonality of grids has a much smaller impact on the waveform simulation accuracy, the model discretisation can be relatively flexible for fitting fluctuating boundaries within any complex problem. Consequently, seismic waveform inversion can explicitly include fluctuating interfaces within a subsurface velocity model.