Abstract The shear-wave velocity is a very important parameter in oil and gas seismic exploration, and vital in prestack elastic-parameters inversion and seismic attribute analysis. However, shearing-velocity logging is seldom carried out because it is expensive. This paper presents a simple method for predicting S-wave velocity which covers the basic factors that influence seismic wave propagation velocity in rocks. The elastic modulus of a rock is expressed here as a weighted arithmetic average between Voigt and Reuss bounds, where the weighting factor, w, is a measurement of the geometric details of the pore space and mineral grains. The S-wave velocity can be estimated from w, which is derived from the P-wave modulus. The method is applied to process well-logging data for a carbonate reservoir in Sichuan Basin, and shows the predicted S-wave velocities agree well with the measured S-wave velocities.
This work is supported by the High-Tech Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2008AA093001) and China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Grant No. YPH08006).
Cite this article:
LIU Ling,GENG Jian-Hua,GUO Tong-Lou. The bound weighted average method (BWAM) for predicting S-wave velocity[J]. APPLIED GEOPHYSICS, 2012, 9(4): 421-428.
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