Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Velocity analysis for transversely isotropic media

Conference ·
OSTI ID:89695
;  [1]
  1. Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO (United States)

The main difficulty in extending seismic processing to anisotropic media is the recovery of anisotropic velocity fields from surface reflection data. The authors suggest carrying out velocity analysis for transversely isotropic media by inverting the dip-dependence of P-wave moveout velocities. The inversion technique is based on the analytic equation for the normal moveout (NMO) velocity for dipping reflectors in anisotropic media, derived by Tsvankin (1994). Their inversion procedure makes it possible to obtain a family of solutions for the vertical velocity V{sub P0} and Thomsen (1986) parameters {epsilon} and {delta}, all of which have the same NMO velocity as a function of ray parameter. It is shown that all models in this family have the same horizontal velocity, long-spread (nonhyperbolic) P-wave moveout for horizontal reflectors, as well as the same time-migration impulse response. In order to describe this family of models, they introduce an effective parameter {eta} that reduces to the difference {epsilon} {minus} {delta} in the limit of weak anisotropy. Therefore, inversion of dip moveout provides enough information to perform all essential time-processing steps including DMO, prestack and poststack time migration using only surface P-wave data. Generalization of Tsvankin`s single-layer NMO equation for layered anisotropic media with a dipping reflector allows them to apply the anisotropic velocity analysis in vertically inhomogeneous media.

DOE Contract Number:
FG02-89ER14079
OSTI ID:
89695
Report Number(s):
CONF-941015--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Velocity analysis for transversely isotropic media
Conference · Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 1994 · OSTI ID:10185915

Fowler DMO and time migration for transversely isotropic media
Journal Article · Wed May 01 00:00:00 EDT 1996 · Geophysics · OSTI ID:277525

Feasibility of nonhyperbolic moveout inversion in transversely isotropic media
Journal Article · Fri May 01 00:00:00 EDT 1998 · Geophysics · OSTI ID:619626