Impact of fracture normal and shear stiffnesses on the scattering attenuation of P and S waves in a naturally fractured rock

Abstract

In this paper, numerical simulations are conducted to study elastic wave transport, scattering, and attenuation in a naturally fractured rock associated with length-correlated fracture normal and shear stiffnesses. The model represents the pattern of a real fracture outcrop in an explicit fashion based on the discrete fracture network approach and computes the dynamical interaction between waves and fractures based on the displacement discontinuity method. A broad spectrum of geologically relevant fracture stiffness values are explored to analyse the impact of fracture normal and shear stiffness components on the wavefield evolution. It is observed that when the fracture normal and shear stiffnesses are both high, the wavefield is a propagative mode dominated by a forward ballistic transport. With the reduction of fracture normal and/or shear stiffnesses, the wavefield becomes diffusive characterised by the emergence and dominance of coda waves. If the fracture stiffnesses are very low, waves become trapped entering the so-called localisation regime associated with an absence of effective transport as well as a profound attenuation. Our results show that the scattering attenuation of S waves tends to be greater than that of P waves in the propagation and diffusion regimes, but becomes similar in the localisation regime. The research findings of this paper have important implications for understanding and predicting the seismic wave attenuation behaviour in naturally fractured rocks for various geophysical applications.