Reflected waves in finely layered tilted orthorhombic media

Abstract

Upscaling in seismics is a homogenization of finely layered media in the zero-frequency limit. An upscaling technique for arbitrary anisotropic layers has been developed by Schoenberg and Muir. Applying this technique to a stack of layers of orthorhombic (ORT) symmetry whose vertical symmetry planes are aligned, results in an effective homogeneous layer with orthorhombic symmetry. If the symmetry planes in a horizontal orthorhombic layer are rotated with respect to vertical, the medium is referred to as tilted orthorhombic (TOR) medium, and the stack composed of TOR layers in zero-frequency limit will produce an effective medium of a lower symmetry than orthorhombic. We consider a P-wave that propagates through a stack of thin TOR layers, then it is reflected (preserving the mode) at some interface below the stack, and then propagates back through the same stack. We propose to use a special modified medium for the upscaling in case of this sequential down- and up-propagation: each TOR layer in the stack is replaced by two identical TOR layers whose tilt angles have the opposite algebraic sign. In this modified medium, one-way propagation of a seismic wave (any wave mode) is equivalent to propagation of a pure-mode reflection in the original medium. We apply this idea to study the contribution from an individual layer from the stack and show how the approach can be applied to a stack of TOR layers. To demonstrate the applicability of the model, we use well log data for the upscaling. The model we propose for the upscaling can be used in well-seismic ties to correct the effective parameters obtained from well log data for the presence of tilt, if latter is confirmed by additional measurements (for example, borehole imaging).