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Seismic Waves
Seismic Waves
Introduction
Seismology is the study of the passage of elastic waves
(see below) through the earth. Earthquake seismology is
the best tool to study the interior of the earth.
When an earthquake or explosion occurs, part of the
energy released is as elastic waves that are transmitted
through the earth.
The waves are then detected and recorded
by seismograms, which measure, amplify and record the
motion of the ground.
The information is then used to determine earthquake
locations, the subsurface structures and etc.
Basic Physics
There is some basic terminology and physics that describe
the various aspects of wave form and motion.
The wavelength (λ) is the distance between two adjacent
points on the wave that have similar displacements, one
wavelength is the distance between successive crest.
Amplitude (A) of the wave is the maximum displacement
of the particle motions, or the height of the ripple crest.
Period (T) is the time it takes for two successive waves to
pass a reference point or the motion to complete one
cycle.
The cycle of seismic waves or repetitions in a given unit of
time is called frequency (f). Frequency and period are
related by this relationship:
f = 1 / T�� [unit: hertz (Hz) or 1/s]
The speed in which the wavefront (or ripple crest) travel
can be detected if the time the wavefront takes to reach a
known distance is recorded:
Elastic Moduli
Elasticity is the behavior of a material that when subjected
to a stress (force/area), deforms and changes shape
(strain), but returns to original shape when the stress is
removed.
σ = Eε
E is the constant of proportionality called an elastic
modulus.
K = V0(P-P0)/(V0-VF)
G = σ/ γ
Seismic Waves
There are two different types wave produced by an
earthquake: body waves and surface waves.
Body Waves
� Body waves are seismic waves that travel through
the body of the earth.
� Body waves are reflected and transmitted at
interfaces where seismic velocity and/or density
change, and they obey Snell's law.
The two different types of body waves are:
� P-Waves (P stands for primary or pressure or push-
pull). These waves are also called longitudinal
waves or compressional waves due to particle
compression during their transport. These waves
involve compression and rarefaction of the material as
the wave passes through is but not rotation. P-wave is
transmitted by particle movement back and forth
along the direction of propagation of the wave. The
most correct description of P-waves is it is a dilational
or irrotational waves.
� P-waves has the greatest speed and appears first
on seismograms.
Surface Waves
� Surface waves are seismic waves that are guided
along the surface of the Earth and the layers near
the surface.
� These waves do not penetrate the deep interior of
the earth, and are normally generated by shallow
earthquakes (nuclear explosions do not generate
these surface waves).
� Surface waves are larger in amplitude and longer
in duration than body waves.
� These waves arrive at seismograph after the
arrival of P- and S-waves because of their slower
velocities. The two different surface waves are:
� Rayleigh waves or descriptively called "ground
roll" in exploration seismology. The particle motion
of this wave is confined to a vertical plane
containing the direction of propagation and
retrogrades elliptically. The particle displacements
are greatest at the surface and decrease
exponentially downward. Rayleigh waves show
dispersion, and its velocity is not constant but
varies with wavelength. This wave is similar to
how ocean waves propagate.
� VR < V S
� Period is typically ~ 20 s, with wavelength or ~
100km
Oblique Incidence
� When a P-wave is obliquely incident, there is a
reflected P wave, and the transmitted ray is refracted
in accord with Snell�s Law.
� In addition, some of the compressional energy is
converted into shear energy, and a reflected and
refracted S-wave is generated too.
Refraction & Reflection
Seismology
Reflection seismology is used mostly in exploration
methods, while refraction seismology is use more in whole
Earth studies. Here we will first focus on Refraction
Seismology
What is Seismic Refraction?
o One can study subsurface velocity and layer
interface structure by analyzing the first arrival
times of P-waves (longitudinal or compressional
waves) at the surface of the earth. This technique
is termed seismic refraction.
o Applications of subsurface imaging include:
1. �locating buried archeological sites,
2. assessing subsurface geological hazards,
3. defining aquifer geometry
4. exploring for fossil fuel and other natural
resources.
ic = sin-1(V1/V2)
t DIRECT = x/V1
H1 = t(x=0)(V1V2)/2(V22 �V12)1/2
Reflection Seismology
Reflection seismology began to take prominence in
the 1920s to begin to locate salt domes, an indication
where oil would be found.
The reflection method soon replaced the refraction
after it was proved with numerous successes, the
most visible in the petroleum industry.
Lets Start With a Single Subsurface Interface
The key is to develop an equation which represents
the time it takes for a particular ray to travel through
this single layer. First, the seismic velocity through the
layer of material that the wave is propagating needs
to be lower than the layer directly below, which we will
assume is infinitely thick.
Therefore, just by simple time-velocity relation and
geometry:
Exploration Seismology
In the exploration industry there are many ways of
processing reflection data so as to provide more
information about the near sub-surface. This is
beyond this course, but you may read more non-
examinable material, and also in the following text
taken from the Signalworks Pty. Ltd web site.
An Introduction to Reflection Seismology Data
Processing
(from Signalworks Pty. Ltd)
Introduction
Reflection seismology is a technique for imaging the geological structure beneath the
earth's surface using sound energy. The technique is used primarily for oil exploration.
An acoustic energy source at the surface transmits an acoustic signal into the earth,
which reflects some of the energy back toward the surface at each geological interface.
An array of geophones or hydrophones detects the faint signals reflected back to the
surface, which are recorded for later processing. The raw data is very noisy and
uninterpretable, requiring extensive processing to produce an image of the earth's
interior.
Figure 1 illustrates the process of marine seismic data acquisition. The survey ship
trails an acoustic source (usually compressed air 'guns') and a string of hydrophones,
called a streamer. The streamer is usually about 4000m in length and contains groups
of hydrophones spaced typically every 15m. When the air guns are fired, releasing a
pulse of compressed air, a pressure pulse radiates in an approximately spherical
wavefront through the water and into the earth. The semi-circles in figure 1 indicate the
position the wavefront at regular intervals in time (say every 100mS). When the
wavefront reaches a reflecting geological boundary, some of the wavefront energy is
reflected back towards the surface (light grey semi-circles). This echoed acoustic
energy is sensed by the hydrophones and recorded on the ship for later processing.
To simplify seismic acquisition models, the energy received at a hydrophone can be
considered to have travelled along a linear raypath from the source, into the earth, then
reflecting from the boundary back to the hydrophone. Raypaths from the source to four
hydrophones are shown in figure 1. The raypaths are perpendicular to the wavefronts.
Acoustic imaging in its simplest form consists of measuring the time taken by a pulse to
travel from a source to a reflector and back to a receiver. Repeating these
measurements over a range of positions allows an image of the reflecting surface to be
formed. Figure 2 shows the configuration of a simple imaging system. In practice, noise
and imaging distortions require more elaborate data acquisition configurations and data
processing techniques to achieve accurate imaging.
Ideally, the simple acquisition configuration could be used to produce the acoustic
image shown in figure 3. Each geological interface reflects some of the acoustic signal
so that each trace shows a pulse corresponding to each reflector, with an increasing
reflector depth resulting in an increasing time delay on the corresponding pulse.
a) ..........b)
Figure 3. a) Simple Acquisition Acoustic Image and .. b) Detail of First Trace (Ideal
case).
The simple imaging technique shown in figure 2 was used in the early days of seismic
imaging, but produced poor results. The main problems were:
a) Noise -- the reflection energy is usually small after travelling a large distance and
bouncing off a weak reflector. Spurious noise in the earth, air and recording electronics
can swamp the reflection signal.
b) Multiples -- the raypaths not only travelled from source to receiver with one bounce
off a reflector, but also followed paths making several intermediate bounces between
reflectors and producing a travel time out of proportion to the reflector depth. Events on
the image associated with raypaths making multiple bounces are called 'multiples' and
should be removed from the image.
c) Source Pulse Shape -- the source pulse may not be sharp enough to produce a high
resolution image and may vary in shape from shot to shot. (The activation of the source
to produce a pulse is termed a 'shot'.)
Figure 4 shows the effect of noise on the image. The reflected acoustic pulses are
recorded from the hydrophones with a peak amplitude of 1mV. The noisy image shown
in the figure has had random noise added with a normal amplitude distribution, mean
value of 0mV and standard deviation of 0.5mV. The noise has nearly completely
masked the reflection energy. The reflections cannot be discerned on the extracted
trace shown in figure 4 (b).
Adding together repeated records taken at the same location can be used to improve
the signal to noise ratio. Figure 5 shows a series of 32 repeated records. The reflected
energy at 156mS and 416mS can be vaguely made out on this display, but would be
difficult from a single trace. This figure also shows the result of 'stacking' these records.
Stacking involves summing each trace and normalising the resultant summed trace.
The reflection energy is reinforced and the random noise tends to cancel in the stacked
trace (figure 5 (b)), resulting in an increased signal to noise ratio (S/N).
a) ..........b)
Figure 6 (a) shows the raypath of acoustic energy making two bounces off reflector 1
between the source and receiver. The recorded pulse of this energy is termed a
'multiple' and can be seen at 312mS on the recorded trace of figure 6 (b). To obtain an
acoustic image resembling the reflecting layers, multiples must be removed as they are
mis-positioned on the image. The pulses of energy that travel directly from source to
receiver with a single bounce off the reflectors are termed 'primaries' and produce
proportional images of the geology.
a) ..........b)
Figure 7 (a) shows the data aquisition configuration that allows multiple energy to be
identified and removed during processing. This is called the Common Depth Point
(CDP) method because the data is repeatedly recorded over increasing source to
receiver offsets, but with the raypaths reflecting off the same depth location on each
geological surface. The CDP gather shown in figure 7 (b) shows the recorded traces for
all source / receiver pairs. As the source to receiver offset increases, the length of the
raypath bouncing off a reflector increases and the pulse is recorded at a larger time
delay. The curved line of pulses on the gather corresponding to a particular reflector is
called an 'event', and its shape is determined by the reflector's depth and the acoustic
velocity along the raypaths.
It is the shape of the event that allows multiple events to be identified and removed by
2D filtering. The ideal shape of these events is hyperbolic and is called a Normal Move
Out (NMO) curve. When the geological layers are flat and have constant acoustic
velocity, the events have an accurate NMO shape. As the geology becomes more
complex with sloping layers and rapid velocity variations, the events deviate from the
ideal shape.
a) ..........b)
Figure 8. a) NMO Corrected CDP Gather and .. b) Trace Produced by Stacking the
Gather.
The process used to filter out the multiples is called 'stacking'. This is a two stage
process involving distorting the gather so that the primary events become flat (termed
'NMO correction'), then summing each trace to produce a single stacked trace. The
stacked trace is also usually rescaled by a factor of 1/N, where N is the number of
traces added in the stack.
The shallow primary reflector has been flattened in the gather, but the NMO correction
has stretched out the pulse in the long offset traces. This is called 'NMO stretch' and will
reduce the sharpness of the corresponding stacked pulse. This is seen in the 156mS
event in figure 8 (b) when compared to the ideal event shape in figure 6 (b). To reduce
the problem, regions of excessive NMO stretch are zeroed ('muted') before stacking.
The multiple event at about 312mS is not flattened by the primary NMO correction and
has reduced amplitude on the stack trace. Figure 8 (b) shows that the multiple
amplitude has been reduced by about 50% while the primary amplitudes have been
preserved. This performance can be improved by increasing the range of offsets
recorded in the gather and increasing the sharpness (or resolution) of the pulses.
a) ..........b)
Figure 9 shows the NMO corrected CDP gather and stacked trace produced using a
sharper acoustic pulse. The sharp pulse has a dominant period of 25mS compared to
51mS used previously. The multiple on the stacked trace is reduced to around a quarter
of the amplitude of the primary events.
a) ..........b)
Seismic sources usually produce non-ideal wavelet (or pulse) shapes, often having
several oscillations over a broad wavelet and inconsistent shapes from shot to shot. A
raw wavelet such as shown in figure 10 (a) can be filtered to remove oscillations and
sharpen the pulse to produce a shaped wavelet shown in figure 10 (b). An ideal sharp
wavelet improves the resolution and interpretability of the acoustic image.
Figure 11. The Reflection Point for a Dipping Reflector is Offset from the Middle of
the Source / Receiver Pair.
Figure 11 shows the raypath from a near offset source / receiver pair down to a dipping
reflector. The reflection point does not lie beneath the centre of the source / receiver
where it is plotted on a stacked trace section. The process of repositioning dipping
reflectors is called 'migration', and the output of this process is a 'migrated section'.
Migration also corrects 'diffractions', which are hyperbola shaped events appearing on
stack sections and emanating from sharp discontinuities in the geology. Migration can
be performed on a stack section by summing amplitudes along a hyperbolic curve and
placing the scaled sum at the apex of the hyperbola. This can also be viewed as
collapsing diffractions to a point over the entire stack section. The shape of the
summing hyperbolas varies over the section and is a function of the depth and
shallower acoustic velocities. The velocity distribution determined from earlier stacking
velocity analyses can be used to control the migration process.
a) ..........b)
Figure 12 (a) shows a stacked section with a steeply dipping reflector mis-positioned.
The migrated section (figure 12 (b)) shows the dipping reflector re-positioned in the up-
dip direction and with a steeper slope.
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