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An analysis of seismic attenuation in random porous media

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Abstract

The attenuation of seismic wave in rocks has been one of the interesting research topics, but till now no poroelasticity models can thoroughly explain the strong attenuation of wave in rocks. In this paper, a random porous medium model is designed to study the law of wave propagation in complex rocks based on the theory of Biot poroelasticity and the general theory of stochastic process. This model sets the density of grain, porosity, permeability and modulus of frame as random parameters in space, and only one fluid infiltrates in rocks for the sake of better simulation effect in line with real rocks in earth strata. Numerical simulations are implemented. Two different inverse quality factors of fast P-wave are obtained by different methods to assess attenuation through records of virtual detectors in wave field (One is amplitude decay method in time domain and the other is spectral ratio method in frequency domain). Comparing the attenuation results of random porous medium with those of homogeneous porous medium, we conclude that the attenuation of seismic wave of homogeneous porous medium is far weaker than that of random porous medium. In random porous media, the higher heterogeneous level is, the stronger the attenuation becomes, and when heterogeneity σ = 0.15 in simulation, the attenuation result is consistent with that by actual observation. Since the central frequency (50 Hz) of source in numerical simulation is in earthquake band, the numerical results prove that heterogeneous porous structure is one of the important factors causing strong attenuation in real stratum at intermediate and low frequency.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Seismic Exploration, School of Aerospace, Tsinghua University, Bei**g, 100084, China

    Jiong Liu, JianWei Ma & HuiZhu Yang

  2. Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration & Development, PetroChina, Bei**g, 100083, China

    **g Ba

Authors
  1. Jiong Liu
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  2. **g Ba
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  3. JianWei Ma
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  4. HuiZhu Yang
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Correspondence to Jiong Liu.

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Liu, J., Ba, J., Ma, J. et al. An analysis of seismic attenuation in random porous media. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 53, 628–637 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-010-0109-y

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