Digital core based transmitted ultrasonic wave simulation and velocity accuracy analysis
Zhu Wei1 and Shan Rui2
1. Key Laboratory of Exploration Technologies for Oil and Gas Resources (Yangtze University), Ministry of Education; Geophysics and Oil Resource Institute, Yangtze University, Wuhan 430100, China.
2. CCTEG Xi’an Research Institute, Xi’an 710077, China.
Abstract Transmitted ultrasonic wave simulation (TUWS) in a digital core is one of the important elements of digital rock physics and is used to study wave propagation in porous cores and calculate equivalent velocity. When simulating wave propagates in a 3D digital core, two additional layers are attached to its two surfaces vertical to the wave-direction and one planar wave source and two receiver-arrays are properly installed. After source excitation, the two receivers then record incident and transmitted waves of the digital rock. Wave propagating velocity, which is the velocity of the digital core, is computed by the picked peak-time difference between the two recorded waves. To evaluate the accuracy of TUWS, a digital core is fully saturated with gas, oil, and water to calculate the corresponding velocities. The velocities increase with decreasing wave frequencies in the simulation frequency band, and this is considered to be the result of scattering. When the pore fluids are varied from gas to oil and finally to water, the velocity-variation characteristics between the different frequencies are similar, thereby approximately following the variation law of velocities obtained from linear elastic statics simulation (LESS), although their absolute values are different. However, LESS has been widely used. The results of this paper show that the transmission ultrasonic simulation has high relative precision.
This work was supported by the Open Fund of the Key Laboratory of Exploration Technologies for Oil and Gas Resources (Yangtze University), the Ministry of Education (No. K2014-06), and the Reservoir Geophysical Research Center at Yangtze University.
Cite this article:
. Digital core based transmitted ultrasonic wave simulation and velocity accuracy analysis[J]. APPLIED GEOPHYSICS, 2016, 13(2): 375-381.
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2016, Vol. 13 
