640 research outputs found
How do we understand and visualize uncertainty?
Geophysicists are often concerned with reconstructing subsurface properties using observations collected at or near the surface. For example, in seismic migration, we attempt to reconstruct subsurface geometry from surface seismic recordings, and in potential field inversion, observations are used to map electrical conductivity or density variations in geologic layers. The procedure of inferring information from indirect observations is called an inverse problem by mathematicians, and such problems are common in many areas of the physical sciences. The inverse problem of inferring the subsurface using surface observations has a corresponding forward problem, which consists of determining the data that would be recorded for a given subsurface configuration. In the seismic case, forward modeling involves a method for calculating a synthetic seismogram, for gravity data it consists of a computer code to compute gravity fields from an assumed subsurface density model. Note that forward modeling often involves assumptions about the appropriate physical relationship between unknowns (at depth) and observations on the surface, and all attempts to solve the problem at hand are limited by the accuracy of those assumptions. In the broadest sense then, exploration geophysicists have been engaged in inversion since the dawn of the profession and indeed algorithms often applied in processing centers can all be viewed as procedures to invert geophysical data
MIGRATOM : geophysical tomography using wavefront migration and fuzzy constraints
"MIGRATOM is a third-generation PC-based computer program for geophysical tomograph. It was developed to enable users to address a variety of mining-related problems by mathematically reconstructing the distribution of physical properties in a rock mass, using measurements of travel time or amplitude of wave energy propagated through the rock mass. Examples of applications include litho-logic characterization, fracture detection, fluid monitoring, stress evaluation, and blast assessment. The resolution and accuracy of tomographic reconstructions generally depend very strongly on the geometry of source and receiver locations. In many practical applications, such as cross-borehole tomography, limited coverage results in nonunique reconstructions. MIGRATOM allows the user to constrain the inversion, in order to reduce the nonuniqueness problem. A new approach to application of constraints implemented in MIGRATOM is based on fuzzy logic techniques. Refraction of wave energy is modeled in MIGRATOM using an approach based on Huygens' Principle. Propagation of a continuous wavefront is modeled as a constructive interference phenomenon, which obviates the shadow-zone problem that affects conventional ray-tracing calculations." - NIOSHTIC-2NIOSHTIC no. 10005134199
Seismic Ray Impedance Inversion
This thesis investigates a prestack seismic inversion scheme implemented in the ray
parameter domain. Conventionally, most prestack seismic inversion methods are
performed in the incidence angle domain. However, inversion using the concept of
ray impedance, as it honours ray path variation following the elastic parameter
variation according to Snell’s law, shows the capacity to discriminate different
lithologies if compared to conventional elastic impedance inversion.
The procedure starts with data transformation into the ray-parameter domain and then
implements the ray impedance inversion along constant ray-parameter profiles. With
different constant-ray-parameter profiles, mixed-phase wavelets are initially estimated
based on the high-order statistics of the data and further refined after a proper well-to-seismic
tie. With the estimated wavelets ready, a Cauchy inversion method is used to
invert for seismic reflectivity sequences, aiming at recovering seismic reflectivity
sequences for blocky impedance inversion. The impedance inversion from reflectivity
sequences adopts a standard generalised linear inversion scheme, whose results are
utilised to identify rock properties and facilitate quantitative interpretation. It has also
been demonstrated that we can further invert elastic parameters from ray impedance
values, without eliminating an extra density term or introducing a Gardner’s relation
to absorb this term.
Ray impedance inversion is extended to P-S converted waves by introducing the
definition of converted-wave ray impedance. This quantity shows some advantages in
connecting prestack converted wave data with well logs, if compared with the shearwave
elastic impedance derived from the Aki and Richards approximation to the
Zoeppritz equations. An analysis of P-P and P-S wave data under the framework of
ray impedance is conducted through a real multicomponent dataset, which can reduce
the uncertainty in lithology identification.Inversion is the key method in generating those examples throughout the entire thesis
as we believe it can render robust solutions to geophysical problems. Apart from the
reflectivity sequence, ray impedance and elastic parameter inversion mentioned above,
inversion methods are also adopted in transforming the prestack data from the offset
domain to the ray-parameter domain, mixed-phase wavelet estimation, as well as the
registration of P-P and P-S waves for the joint analysis.
The ray impedance inversion methods are successfully applied to different types of
datasets. In each individual step to achieving the ray impedance inversion, advantages,
disadvantages as well as limitations of the algorithms adopted are detailed. As a
conclusion, the ray impedance related analyses demonstrated in this thesis are highly
competent compared with the classical elastic impedance methods and the author
would like to recommend it for a wider application
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