@Article{CiCP-28-442, author = {Gao , Kai and Huang , Lianjie}, title = {Numerical Modeling of Anisotropic Elastic-Wave Sensitivity Propagation for Optimal Design of Time-Lapse Seismic Surveys}, journal = {Communications in Computational Physics}, year = {2020}, volume = {28}, number = {1}, pages = {442--458}, abstract = {

Reliable subsurface time-lapse seismic monitoring is crucial for many geophysical applications, such as enhanced geothermal system characterization, geologic carbon utilization and storage, and conventional and unconventional oil/gas reservoir characterization, etc. We develop an elastic-wave sensitivity propagation method for optimal design of cost-effective time-lapse seismic surveys considering the fact that most of subsurface geologic layers and fractured reservoirs are anisotropic instead of isotropic. For anisotropic media, we define monitoring criteria using qP- and qS-wave sensitivity energies after decomposing qP- and qS-wave components from the total elastic-wave sensitivity wavefield using a hybrid time- and frequency-domain approach. Geophones should therefore be placed at locations with significant qP- and qS-wave sensitivity energies for cost-effective time-lapse seismic monitoring in an anisotropic geology setting. Our numerical modeling results for a modified anisotropic Hess model demonstrate that, compared with the isotropic case, subsurface anisotropy changes the spatial distributions of elastic-wave sensitivity energies. Consequently, it is necessary to consider subsurface anisotropies when designing the spatial distribution of geophones for cost-effective time-lapse seismic monitoring. This finding suggests that it is essential to use our new anisotropic elastic-wave sensitivity modeling method for optimal design of time-lapse seismic surveys to reliably monitor the changes in subsurface reservoirs, fracture zones or target monitoring regions.

}, issn = {1991-7120}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.4208/cicp.OA-2018-0192}, url = {http://global-sci.org/intro/article_detail/cicp/16851.html} }