Dipole shear anisotropy logging

Cengiz Esmersoy*, Schlumberger-Doll Research; Klaas Koster, Marty Williams, Amoco

Production; Austin Boyd, GeoQuest; and Michael Kane, Schlumberger-Doll Research

SL3.7

Summary
Sonic-scale shear anisotropy of formations are obtained
from dipole-shear measurements acquired by orthogonal
source and receiver pairs. These measurements resemble
miniature 4-component shear VSP surveys inside the
borehole. Data from two orthogonal sources and an array
of orthogonal receivers are processed providing three main
logs; the fast and slow shear slownesses, and the fast shear
polarization angle. Potential applications include; shale
anisotropy for better seismic models, maximum stress and
fracture/microcrack strike direction for horizontal well
drilling and fracture height and azimuth determination in
hydraulic fracturing.
Introduction
In an anisotropic medium shear waves split into two waves
with orthogonal polarizations. This property has been
utilized in seismic for azimuthal anisotropy measurements
(Crampin, 1985; Alford, 1986; Thomsen, 1988; Johnston,
1986; Winterstein, 1991). Anisotropy comes in various
forms representing the symmetry of the medium at some
scale. In this abstract only the simplest form of anisotropy;
Transversely Isotropic (TI) anisotropy is considered.
Intrinsic anisotropy of horizontal shale beds, and effective
anisotropy of horizontal fine layering represent the TIV (TI
anisotropy with a vertical axis of symmetry) anisotropy
where the shear anisotropy effects are maximum for
highly-deviated and horizontal wells (White, 1991;
Esmersoy, 1994). Oriented inclusions such as vertical
fractures and microcracks, and differences in horizontal
stresses cause azimuthal (or TIH) anisotropy. As illustrated
in Figure 1, a vertical well provides the best conditions for
azimuthal shear anisotropy measurements; largest slowness
separation between the split-shear waves and insensitivity
to effective anisotropy of horizontal layering.

Figure 1. Logging azimuthal shear anisotropy in a vertical well.

Shear/Flexural wave splitting

The problem of wave propagation in a borehole surrounded
by an anisotropic medium has been studied by many
researchers and several numerical and analytical methods
have been developed to compute the wavefield (Schmitt,
1989; Ellefsen et al., 1990; Sinha et al., 1994). Here we will
consider only the form of the solutions in terms of the
shear/flexural wave Greens functions. Figure 2 shows a
borehole in an anisotropic medium with its axis of
symmetry perpendicular to the borehole axis. A dipole
oriented at degrees from the fast shear
source
direction can be replaced by two dipole sources, u(t) cos
and
sin inside the fast and slow shear polarization
planes. The dipole Greens functions representing
propagation from the source to the receiver location for fast
and slow polarization directions are denoted by g,(t) and

Figure 2. Shear/flexural wave splitting in dipole logging.

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Dipole shear anisotropy logging

g,(t). These functions are typically complicated containing

the coupling and propagation properties of the shear waves
and the dispersive
waves. The exact expressions for
and cross,
components of the
the
waves are given in terms of these Greens
functions by

=
=

u(t)

sin

cos

where
denotes convolution in time. The cross component
has a very simple form; it is the difference between the slow
and the fast direction
responses weighted by an angle
term. As the angle varies the cross-component waveform
shape remains the same, but its amplitude is scaled by
The cross-component amplitude
= sin
becomes identically zero, for =
when source
orientation is in the plane of fast or slow shear wave
polarizations. The cross-component waveforms change sign
as the angle goes through one of these planes. These
properties of cross components will be used in the following
section to interpret field data observations.

Cross-component waveforms
The center panel in Figure 3 shows one of the
cross-component waveforms of the first dipole source across
a
ft section. The right panel shows the azimuthal
orientation of the first dipole, and the left panel shows the
variation of the travel times of the first (light curve) and
second (dark curve) dipole
components at
equal-offset receivers. These times are obtained by picking
an early zero crossing in the
waveforms,
therefore their values are somewhat larger than the the
actual shear travel times.
Below
ft, the tool orientation does not change and both
the cross component amplitudes and the relative positions
of the travel times remain the same. Above this depth,
however, the tool starts rotating rapidly causing significant
variations in the cross-component amplitudes and the travel
times. The cross-component amplitudes go through minima
at around 490 and 484.5 ft. The tool rotation between
these two depth points is about 90 degrees, as seen in the
right panel, consistent with an azimuthal anisotropy model.
Moreover, as predicted by the theoretical model in the
previous section, the cross-component waveforms change
sign on two sides of these minima. The travel times indicate
that the faster
wave is polarized along the
second dipole direction at 490 ft, and along the first dipole
direction at 484.5 ft. Since the azimuth log on the right
panel shows the first dipole orientation, in this section the
fast shear direction is about N
E (which is the same as
N
E). This observation will be compared later with
the results obtained by inverting all four components, at
each depth point, to find the fast-shear polarization
direction logs. The inversion will show that all through
section the fast shear polarization is around N
E.

Figure 3. Variation

the cross-component waveforms and

travel times, as the tool rotates during
logging. Depths in this
denote the position of the
dipole source which is 12.75 ft below the center of the
receiver array.

The anisotropy logs

The discussion in the previous section showed that if the
tool rotates rapidly, we can determine the fast-shear
polarization direction in a section from the
cross-component energies and from inline-component travel
times. To measure the fast-shear polarization direction, and
slow and fast shear slownesses at every log point (e.g., every
0.5 ft), one could stop the tool at that depth and record
and cross components as it rotates azimuthally. But
this would be impractical and, in fact, it is not necessary.
4-component data refer to data acquired by two orthogonal
dipole sources located at some depth and to two orthogonal
dipole receivers located at some other depth. Theoretically,
4-component data contain all azimuthal information at that
depth position. In other words, assuming perfectly matched
source and receiver pairs, given 4-component data one can
reconstruct dipole waveforms at any azimuthal orientation
of the tool. This tool rotation is obtained by using
(1986) technique of rotating
shear
seismic data. As indicated in Figure 2 and equation
as
the tool is rotated synthetically, when the dipole source
direction is aligned with the fast or slow shear polarization
directions of the medium, the cross components become
zero. Therefore, one way to determine the fast or slow
shear directions, at each depth location, is to rotate the
data as explained above and find the angle that
minimizes the energy in the cross components.
Figure 4 shows the 4-component tool rotations applied to
field data. The four light traces at 0 and 90 degrees, are the
measured
and cross components. The black traces
are computed from the measured traces for rotation angles

Dipole shear anisotropy logging

from 0 to 180 degrees in 2 degree increments. These

rotated waveforms agree with the theoretical predictions
assuming azimuthal anisotropy. The cross components
become minimum at around 60 and 150 degrees (separated
by 90 degrees), and the cross component waveforms change
sign across these angles. The inline components mainly
change in amplitude and in travel time. The inline
component at 150 degrees of rotation arrive earlier than the
one at 60 degrees of rotation, indicating that it is the
fast-shear polarization direction. The dipole source
orientation at this depth is N -40 E, meaning that the 150
degrees of rotation points at N 110 E, consistent with the
observations in Figure 3.
The procedure described above; rotating 4-component data
by various angles, picking the one that minimizes the cross
energy and giving the earlier inline arrival, can be used
with dipole data at each depth to generate angle logs. This
is shown in the center panel of Figure 5. Independent
estimates of the fast-shear azimuth at every 0.5 ft are
consistent across this whole section giving an overall
azimuth of about N 110 E. The left panel shows the the
two slownesses along the fast and slow polarization
directions. These logs are obtained by first rotating the
4-component data at each depth using the angles in the
center panel, and then by computing the slownesses from
the inline receiver arrays. The slowness anisotropy

Figure 4. Rotation of component dipole shear waveforms.

Figure 5. Dipole shear anisotrop y logs; fast and slow shear
slownesses (left), fast-shear polarization azimuth (center)
and minimum and maximum energies in the cross
components.

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Dipole shear anisotropy logging

(slowness difference divided by average slowness) is mostly
6%. The right panel shows the
in the range of 3
minimum and maximum percent cross energy. These curves
are the minimum and maximum possible values (as a
function of
of the energy in the cross component data
divided by the total energy. A small minimum cross energy
means that the assumed anisotropic model fits the data
well at the solution. This is a necessary but not a sufficient
condition for the angle estimate to be reliable. For example
in an isotropic formation any value of 8 gives identically
zero cross components. A large maximum cross energy
indicates that the cross energy is highly dependent on
and that the environment is not isotropic. Finally, a small
minimum cross energy and a large maximum cross energy is
a reasonable indicator of anisotropy that is consistent with
the model. In Figure 5, there is a correlation between the
anisotropy measured in the slowness logs and the behavior
of the cross-energy plots. For example, in the energy plot,
the best separation between the minimum and maximum
curves is around 478 ft, referenced to the center of the
receiver array. Since the source is 13 ft lower than this
reference, for this position of the tool, waves are
propagating through the highly anisotropic zone between
478 and 488 ft consistent with the large maximum energy.
The small minimum energy, then, indicates that the
anisotropy is consistent with the TIH model, therefore the
angle estimate is likely to be accurate.

Conclusions
Dipole shear acquisition, for the first time, provides an
opportunity for measuring sonic-scale in-situ anisotropy of
formations surrounding the borehole. It is expected that in
most highly deviated wells, particularly in shales, shear
anisotropy will have significant effect on the dipole shear
logs. It is also expected that, differences in horizontal
stresses and/or oriented
will have a
measurable effect on the dipole measurements in vertical
wells. The field example, indicates that, at least in this
normal-slow formation, relatively small amount of shear
anisotropy can be measured. This conclusion is supported
by the fact that, different and somewhat independent ways
of obtaining the fast-shear azimuth; the cross-component
waveform minima and the 4-component processing gave
consistent results. The fast-shear azimuth results are, also,
supported by a shear VSP conducted at this well. Koster et
al. (1994) s h ow that the azimuth obtained from a
4-component shear VSP survey is in very good agreement
with the dipole shear results. Mueller et al. (1994) present
the results of two case studies where the dipole shear
anisotropy logging is used to characterize fractures in fast
format ions.

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Amoco Production Company for
their collaboration in this study and for their permission to
publish the data set presented here.

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