Abstract
Advances in 3D seismic acquisition and processing are providing new tools for the analysis of fractured zones. Studying the seismic wave amplitude variation as a function of azimuth is one of the current methods to determine the anisotropy parameters. Based on recentstudies conducted with field data, several questions remain, notably the validity of the Amplitude Versus AZimuth (AVAZ) analysis of the seismic horizons when the preprocessing of the data oversimplifies the reality. In this paper, we use an anisotropic dynamic ray tracing to simulate the wave propagation in 3D isotropic and Horizontal Transverse Isotropic (HTI) models. Our objectives are i) to analyze the biases resulting from the use of a horizontal layering approximation in the geometrical spreading compensation and in the mapping between source‐receiver offset and incidence angle and ii) to evaluate their consequences on the AVAZ curves corresponding to an HTI anisotropy. Because the true amplitude PSTM or PSDM workflows based on ray tracing include an exact geometrical spreading compensation and account for the true incidence angles, our conclusion is that these tools should be used to study the amplitudes in anisotropic media even in case of moderately inhomogeneous structures.
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