Contrasting behavior between dispersive seismic velocity and attenuation: Advantages in subsoil characterization

Abstract

A careful look into the pertinent models of poroelasticity reveals that in water-saturated sediments or soils, the seismic (P and S wave) velocity dispersion and attenuation in the low field-seismic frequency band (20–200 Hz) have a contrasting behavior in the porosity-permeability domain. Taking advantage of this nearly orthogonal behavior, a new approach has been proposed, which leads to unique estimates of both porosity and permeability simultaneously. Through realistic numerical tests, the effect of maximum frequency content in data and the integration of P and S waves on the accuracy and robustness of the estimates are demonstrated.