Joint inversion ofP- andPS-waves in orthorhombic media: Theory and a physical modeling study

Reflection traveltimes recorded over azimuthally anisotropic fractured media can provide valuable information for reservoir characterization. As recently shown by Grechka and Tsvankin, normal moveout (NMO) velocity of any pure (unconverted) mode depends on only three medium parameters and usually has an elliptical shape in the horizontal plane. Because of the limited information contained in the NMO ellipse of P-waves, it is advantageous to use moveout velocities of shear or converted modes in attempts to resolve the coefficients of realistic orthorhombic or lower‐symmetry fractured models. Joint inversion of P and PS traveltimes is especially attractive because it does not require shear‐wave excitation. Here, we show that for models composed of horizontal layers with a horizontal symmetry plane, the traveltime of converted waves is reciprocal with respect to the source and receiver positions (i.e., it remains the same if we interchange the source and receiver) and can be adequately described by NMO velocity on conventional‐length spreads. The azimuthal dependence of converted‐wave NMO velocity has the same form as for pure modes but requires the spatial derivatives of two-way traveltime for its determination. Using the generalized Dix equation of Grechka, Tsvankin, and Cohen, we derive a simple relationship between the NMO ellipses of pure and converted waves that provides a basis for obtaining shear‐wave information from P and PS data. For orthorhombic models, the combination of the reflection traveltimes of the P-wave and two split PS-waves makes it possible to reconstruct the azimuthally dependent NMO velocities of the pure shear modes and to find the anisotropic parameters that cannot be determined from P-wave data alone. The method is applied to a physical modeling data set acquired over a block of orthorhombic material—Phenolite XX-324. The inversion of conventional‐spread P and PS moveout data allowed us to obtain the orientation of the vertical symmetry planes and eight (out of nine) elastic parameters of the medium (the reflector depth was known). The remaining coefficient (c12or δ(3)in Tsvankin’s notation) is found from the direct P-wave arrival in the horizontal plane. The inversion results accurately predict moveout curves of the pure S-waves and are in excellent agreement with direct measurements of the horizontal velocities.