Analytical expressions for the borehole seismic signatures excited by an explosive source buried in an elastic half‐space

• Published in: Geophysical Prospecting 2018-03, Vol.66 (S1), p.161-174
• Main Author: Ionov, Andrei M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Borehole seismics; Buried source; Modelling; VSP; Wave propagation
• ISSN: 0016-8025; 1365-2478
• DOI: 10.1111/1365-2478.12610

ABSTRACT Borehole guided waves that are excited by explosive sources outside of the borehole are important for interpreting borehole seismic surveys and for rock property inversion workflows. Borehole seismograms are typically modelled using numerical methods of wave propagation. In order to benchmark such numerical algorithms and partially to interpret the results of modelling, an analytical methodology is presented here to compute synthetic seismograms. The specific setup is a wavefield emanating from a monopole point source embedded within a homogeneous elastic medium that interacts with a fluid‐filled borehole and a free surface. The methodology assumes that the wavelength of the seismic signal is much larger than the borehole radius. In this paper, it is supposed that there is no poroelastic coupling between the formation and the borehole. The total wavefield solution consists of P, PP, and PS body waves; the surface Rayleigh wave; and the low‐frequency guided Stoneley wave (often referred as the tube wave) within the borehole. In its turn, the tube wave consists of the partial responses generated by the incident P‐wave and the reflected PP and PS body waves at the borehole mouth and by the Rayleigh wave, as well as the Stoneley wave eigenmode. The Mach tube wave, which is a conic tube wave, additionally appears in the Mach cone in a slow formation with the tube‐wave velocity greater than the shear one. The conditions of appearance of the Mach wave in a slow formation are formulated. It is shown that the amplitude of the Mach tube wave strongly depends on Poisson's ratio of the slow surrounding formation. The amplitude of the Mach tube wave exponentially decreases when the source depth grows for weakly compressible elastic media with Poisson's ratio close to 0.5 (i.e., saturated clays and saturated clay soils). Asymptotic expressions are also provided to compute the wavefield amplitudes for different combinations of source depth and source‐well offset. These expressions allow an approximate solution of the wavefield to be computed much faster (within several seconds) than directly computing the implicit integrals arising from the analytical formulation.