Joint inversion of logging-while-drilling multipole acoustic data to determine P- and S-wave velocities in unconsolidated slow formations

Abstract

We have developed a joint inversion method for logging-while-drilling (LWD) multipole acoustic data processing to simultaneously determine the formation of P- and S-wave velocities. The presence of the LWD tool strongly influences the dispersion characteristics of quadrupole and monopole leaky-P-waves, especially in unconsolidated slow formations. We have verified that an equivalent-tool theory can be adequately used to model the LWD multipole wave dispersion characteristics and can therefore be used to do forward modeling for the inversion. A major advantage of jointly inverting the multipole data sets, as compared with separately inverting each individual data set, is the reduction of uncertainties in the estimated formation of P- and S-wave velocities. We have applied the method to field data processing. The results found that the method not only corrected the dispersion effect in the quadrupole and leaky-P-wave data but also simultaneously obtained the formation of P- and S-wave velocities.