Automatic P and S velocity determination from full waveform digital acoustic logs

Abstract

Automatic methods of determining P and S velocities from full waveform acoustic logs are studied and compared. The suggested P‐wave method is an event detector which is based on threshold detection in a window near the previous picks and fine adjustment by a semblance correlation. The moveouts found by the correlation process are used to find common source P velocities as well as effective borehole compensated (BHC) P velocities. Compensated velocities are derived from waveforms from complementing tool positions which compare favorably to velocities from standard BHC sonic logs. We call the most reliable method for S waves the P‐correlated S‐method. It consists of correlating the P waveform with the rest of the record to find the S arrival. The S waveform is then correlated with the next record to determine the S velocity. This method is compared with published techniques and proves more stable and reliable. The method does not necessitate a distinct S‐wave arrival and can utilize the existence of the reflected conical wave whose phase velocity is controlled by the S velocity of the formation.