measuring rock properties in boreholes

What is it about?

Full-waveform inversion (FWI) is applied to extract velocity structures around a borehole using acoustic logging data. The velocity structures around the borehole is used for investigating depth of borehole fluid invasion into formation rocks. Although only the first arrived P waves are utilized due to the difficulties for matching the whole waveform of the synthetic and the field data at current stage, FWI shows its potential for obtaining a higher-resolution velocity model for both P and S waves in all kinds of rock formations in the future.

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Why is it important?

This works uses the entire waveform instead of just travel time information, an improvement from previous works. This allows for the estimation of both compressional and shear wave velocities surrounding the borehole, instead of just the compressional velocities.