			Home About us Contact

Scattering Attenuation (scattering + attenuation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Earth and Environmental Science	100%

Selected Abstracts

Scattering of elastic waves in media with a random distribution of fluid-filled cavities: theory and numerical modelling

GEOPHYSICAL JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2004
Tae-Kyung Hong
SUMMARY The propagation of elastic waves is modelled in media with a random distribution of fluid-filled circular cavities, which display high physical impedance in contrast to background media. Theoretical attenuation expressions for media with circular cavities, which may be filled with any material (e.g. vacuum, fluid, elastic materials), are formulated using an ensemble treatment for first-order transmitted waves. Numerical estimates of scattering attenuation rates agree with the theoretical results well. The scattering attenuations (Q,1) are proportional to the scale of cavities and the number density (,, number of cavities per area in a medium). The decrease of primary energy with the size of cavities does not result in the increase of coda energy owing to the increase of both purely backscattered waves from cavities and the trapped waves inside cavities. Scattering properties (e.g. scattering attenuation, coda energy, phase fluctuation of primary waves) in media with randomly distributed cavities are very different from those in stochastic random media. It appears that heterogeneities with high impedance in the earth may not be well represented with stochastic random heterogeneities. [source]

Scattering behaviour at Merapi volcano (Java) revealed from an active seismic experiment

GEOPHYSICAL JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2001
Ulrich Wegler
SUMMARY The seismic structure of the stratovolcano Merapi (Java, Indonesia) was studied using an active seismic experiment. Three 3 km long seismic profiles each consisting of up to 30 three-component seismometers with an interstation distance of 100 m were built up in an altitude range between 1000 and 2000 m above sea level. The detailed study of the seismic properties of the propagation media in active volcanic regions is important to understand the natural seismic signals used for eruption forecasting. The seismic experiment at Merapi therefore concentrates on the heterogeneous structure within a radius of 5 km from the active dome, where the sources of most of the natural volcanic seismic events are located. The cone of Merapi volcano consists of different materials changing on a small scale due to the layering of eruptive material. Additionally, the topography of the erosion valleys leads to an irregular deposition, which cannot be described by a simple 1-D layering. These inhomogeneities have a strong influence on seismic signals. The direct P and S waves are attenuated quickly and show only small amplitudes on seismograms. The energy lost from the direct waves, however, is not changed into heat but scattered and can be observed as seismic coda following the direct waves. The observed seismograms show a spindle-like amplitude increase after the direct P phase. This shape of the envelope can be explained by the diffusion model. According to this model there are so many strong inhomogeneities that the direct wave can be neglected and all energy is concentrated in multiple scattered waves. Besides the envelope, the coherence and polarization properties of the wavefield also indicate strong scattering. Only the first onset shows coherence over a station spacing of 100 m, whereas the late phases carrying the major part of the energy are mainly incoherent. The horizontal components of the seismograms have larger amplitudes than the vertical component, but within the horizontal plane the polarization is almost arbitrary, corresponding to waves arriving from scatterers located arbitrarily in space. As a result of the inversion using the diffusion model we obtain values of the S -wave scattering attenuation coefficient, ,s, and the S -wave intrinsic absorption coefficient, ,i. In the frequency range of 4,20 Hz used in this study the scattering attenuation is at least one order of magnitude larger than the intrinsic absorption (,s,,i). The mean free path of S waves is as low as 100 m (,s,1,100 m). The scattering coefficient is independent of frequency (,s,f0.0), whereas the coefficient of intrinsic attenuation increases with increasing frequency (,i,f1.6). The natural seismic signals at Merapi volcano show similar characteristics to the artificial shots. The first onsets have only small amplitudes and the energy maximum arrives delayed compared to the direct waves. Therefore, these signals appear to be strongly affected by multiple scattering also. [source]

Seismic attenuation in Faroe Islands basalts

GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING, Issue 1 2008
F. Shaw
ABSTRACT We analysed vertical seismic profiling (VSP) data from two boreholes at Glyvursnes and Vestmanna on the island of Streymoy, Faroe Islands, to determine the magnitude and causes of seismic attenuation in sequences of basalt flows. The work is part of SeiFaBa, a major project integrating data from vertical and offset VSP, surface seismic surveys, core samples and wireline log data from the two boreholes. Values of effective seismic quality factor (Q) obtained at Glyvursnes and Vestmanna are sufficiently low to significantly degrade the quality of a surface reflection seismic image. This observation is consistent with results from other VSP experiments in the North Atlantic region. We demonstrate that the most likely cause of the low values of effective Q at Glyvursnes and Vestmanna is a combination of 1D scattering and intrinsic attenuation due to seismic wave-induced fluid flow within pores and micro-cracks. Tests involving 3D elastic wave numerical modelling with a hypothetical basalt model based on field observations, indicate that little scattering attenuation is caused by lateral variations in basalt structure. [source]

Effective elastic properties of randomly fractured soils: 3D numerical experiments

GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING, Issue 3 2004
Erik H. Saenger
ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with numerical tests of several rock physical relationships. The focus is on effective velocities and scattering attenuation in 3D fractured media. We apply the so-called rotated staggered finite-difference grid (RSG) technique for numerical experiments. Using this modified grid, it is possible to simulate the propagation of elastic waves in a 3D medium containing cracks, pores or free surfaces without applying explicit boundary conditions and without averaging the elastic moduli. We simulate the propagation of plane waves through a set of randomly cracked 3D media. In these numerical experiments we vary the number and the distribution of cracks. The synthetic results are compared with several (most popular) theories predicting the effective elastic properties of fractured materials. We find that, for randomly distributed and randomly orientated non-intersecting thin penny-shaped dry cracks, the numerical simulations of P- and S-wave velocities are in good agreement with the predictions of the self-consistent approximation. We observe similar results for fluid-filled cracks. The standard Gassmann equation cannot be applied to our 3D fractured media, although we have very low porosity in our models. This is explained by the absence of a connected porosity. There is only a slight difference in effective velocities between the cases of intersecting and non-intersecting cracks. This can be clearly demonstrated up to a crack density that is close to the connectivity percolation threshold. For crack densities beyond this threshold, we observe that the differential effective-medium (DEM) theory gives the best fit with numerical results for intersecting cracks. Additionally, it is shown that the scattering attenuation coefficient (of the mean field) predicted by the classical Hudson approach is in excellent agreement with our numerical results. [source]