SEISMIC SIGNATURES OF PORE CONNECTIVITY

The goal of this dissertation is analyzing medium parameters’ influence on seismic signatures, especially pore connectivity. Firstly, I use the Zoeppritz equation to analyze reflection coefficient's sensitivity to eight medium parameters; results show they all have significantly different sensitivity. Friability is an empirical parameter introduced in General Singular Approximation (GSA) to measure the extent of pore connectivity that has the numerical range from 0 to 1. In the second part, with other assumed medium parameters, calculation results show friability has observable seismic signatures. Most of them have very large, non-monotonic, and nonlinear variations to friability. Specifically, I observe: 1, as friability increases, most stiffness-tensor components decrease; 2, most extended Thomsen's parameters decrease as friability increases. ε², γ², δ², and δ³ in gas-saturated medium and ε¹, δ², and δ³ in water-saturated medium are very sensitive to friability, while others are not; 3, there are sophisticated relationships between phase velocities and friability out of the symmetry plane, especially for S\textsubscript{2} wave; 4, friability equals zero corresponds to the largest critical angle, while friability equals 1 corresponds to the smallest. Critical angle mostly increases as azimuth angle increases; 5, normal incident PP reflection coefficient is enough to detect the friability variation in gas-saturated medium. On the other hand, azimuthal variation of PP reflection coefficient also depends strongly on friability in both media. Lastly, as a comparison to GSA, poroviscoelasticity is introduced by synthesizing Biot theory and viscoelasticity because Biot theory assumes completely connected pore space. The influence of frame inelasticity on poroviscoelastic wave dispersions, attenuations, and reflection and transmission coefficients are computed and analyzed in detail. Results show frame inelasticity has considerable influence on reflection and transmission coefficients in certain frequencies and incidence angles.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Geophysics

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Zhou, Rui 1984-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chesnokov, Evgeni M.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Goloshubin, Gennady M.
• Weglein, Arthur B.
• Tiwary, Dileep K.

• Seismic
• Pore connectivity
• Zoeppritz
• Anisotropy
• Poroviscoelasticity
• Reflection coefficient

Statement dc:rights

• The author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10657/1444

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/1444