Elastic imaging and its applications on investigating Earth’s structures and fault rupture processes
Hejun Zhu
UT Dallas
- Date & Time
- Location
- Building 3, Rambo Auditorium
- Summary
To date, reverse time migration (RTM) is one of the most accurate imaging tools available in the energy industry to deliver accurate subsurface reflectivity distributions. In comparison to other imaging tools, it allows us to take complicated wave physics into account, and map complex Earth’s structures in great details. In this talk, I will present our strategies towards promoting RTM from acoustic to elastic regime. The key challenges to be addressed are: (1) how to accurately decompose elastic P and S wavefields; and (2) what imaging conditions can be used to deal with multi-component elastic wavefields. Over the past several years, we have developed algorithms to tackle these challenges, which have been tested on 2-D and 3-D synthetic experiments. In the first part of this talk, I will present the applications of elastic RTM to improve our capability for delineating reflectivity distributions in complex subsurface environment. In the second part, I will present its applications to imaging earthquake rupture, fracture propagation as well as monitoring microseismicity. In these cases, we do not need to invoke assumptions, such as 1-D velocity models, single rectangular fault planes, and P/S arrival picking. Synthetic results demonstrate that the new technology allows us to characterize complicated temporal and spatial evolution of earthquake rupture processes.
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