| Summary: | Wave propagation and scattering in fractured formations have been modeled with
finite-difference programs and the use of equivalent anisotropic media description of
discrete fractures. This type of fracture description allows a decomposition of the
compliance matrix into two parts: one accounts for the background medium and another
accounts for the fractures. The compliance for the fractures themselves can be a sum of
compliances of various fracture sets with arbitrary orientations. Non-orthorgonality of the
fractures, however, complicates the compliance matrix. At the moment, we can model an
orthorhombic medium (9 independent elastic constants) with the two orthogonal fracture
sets. However, if the fractures are non-orthogonal, this results in more general anisotropy
(monoclinic) for which we need to specify 11 independent parameters.. Theoretical
formulation shows that the finite difference program can be extended to simulate wave
propagation in monoclinic media with little additional computational and storage cost.
|
|---|