Conic velocity model

Abstract

The effect of gradually increasing velocity with depth in compacted sediment layers is described by asymptotically bounded velocity models. These models can be defined by three intuitive parameters: the velocity and its vertical gradient at an initial depth level, and a bounded velocity value. We have recently introduced the exponential asymptotically bounded (EAB) model, which belongs to this family of velocity models. In this work we introduce another monotonously increasing and asymptotically bounded model, whose advantage is the simplicity of ray tracing. The ray trajectories in this model are elliptic, hyperbolic or parabolic curves. The linear velocity model with a circular trajectory is a particular case of the proposed model. Since the shape of the ray trajectories correspond to the three types of conic sections, we call the proposed velocity model conic.