Attenuation and dispersion of elastic waves in a poroelastic medium with

spherical inclusions

Radim Ciz
CSIRO Petroleum, ARRC, Kensington, Perth, Australia

Julianna Toms and Boris Gurevich

Curtin University of Technology, Department of Exploration Geophysics, Perth, Australia

ABSTRACT: Mesoscopic heterogeneity in a fluid-saturated poroelastic host medium causes significant atten-
uation and dispersion of seismic waves due to wave-induced flow of the pore fluid between more compliant
to less compliant areas and vice versa. This paper analyzes the model of a plane elastic wave propagating in
a poroelastic medium with spherical mesoscopic heterogeneity of another porous material. The resulting scat-
tered wavefield consists of the scattered normal compressional and shear waves and Biots slow wave, which
attenuates rapidly with distance from the inclusion and represents the main difference with the elastic case. The
obtained analytical expressions for reflected fast compressional wave and Biots slow wave amplitudes can be
used in conjunction with the multiple scattering method of Waterman & Truell (1961) to compute frequency
dependent velocity and attenuation in a fluid-saturated medium with a random distribution of spherical inclu-
sions. The frequency dependence of the attenuation has a form of a relaxation peak, with the maximum of the
dimensionless attenuation at a frequency at which the wavelength of the Biots slow wave is approximately
equal to the characteristic size of the inclusion. Attenuation scales with at low frequencies and with 1/2
at high frequencies. These asymptotes are consistent with the double porosity model of Pride and Berryman
(2003).

1 INTRODUCTION medium (White et al. 1976) consisting of alternating

Seismic attenuation and dispersion are wave field
characteristics that can provide important information
about the structure and composition of a medium. It is
well known that Biots (1962) theory of elastic wave
propagation in homogeneous porous media underes-
timates the observed attenuation and dispersion by
at least one order of magnitude. One-possible cause
of the larger than predicted attenuation; is associated
with the presence of spatial heterogeneities. When a
porous medium contains regions of variable compli-
ance, the passing compressional wave can cause pore
fluid to flow from more compliant to less compliant
areas and vice versa. Analysis of this phenomenon
requires a theoretical model of wave propagation in
an inhomogeneous porous medium.
Theoretical studies of elastic wave attenuation and
dispersion in saturated porous media due to the pres-
ence of small-scale heterogeneities were initiated in
the 1970s, when J.E. White and his colleagues intro-
duced two theoretical models of this phenomenon.
They developed a 1-D model of a finely layered porous
layers of gas and liquid saturation. Along with a 3-D
model of an array of spherical gas patches embedded
in a homogeneous liquid-saturated porous background
(White, 1975). The results of these studies were later
rederived using Biots (1962) theory of poroelastic-
ity by Norris (1993) and Dutta and Ode (1979a,b),
respectively.
Common to all of the above formulations, was
the fact that, they modeled regular (periodic) het-
erogeneities of the porous medium. For 1-D media,
this was recognized as a limitation by Gurevich and
Lopatnikov (1995), who developed a theoretical model
for elastic wave attenuation and dispersion in randomly
layered porous materials. They showed that behavior
of the frequency dependent attenuation and dispersion
is quite different for random and periodic layering.
For 3-D heterogeneities, Johnson (2001) developed
an approximate theory, which generalizes the results
of White (1975) to a periodic ensemble of fluid patches
of arbitrary shape. Recently, a more general model
was proposed by Pride and Berryman (2003a,b) which
allows for an ensemble of inclusions with contrast in

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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
any material properties ( the so-called double-porosity,
dual permeability medium). However, common to all
the 3-D models proposed so far, is the fact that,
they are limited to regular spatial configurations of
heterogeneities. An exception is the work of Gurevich
et al. (1998) who analyzed the propagation of an elastic
wave in a porous medium with randomly distributed
spheriodal inclusions. However this particular work
was based on the solution of a scattering problem using
the Born approximation. Thus, it was limited to small
contrasts in material properties between the inclusion
and host medium a situation of limited interest for
most applications.
In this paper we study the attenuation and disper-
sion of elastic waves in a porous medium, caused by the
presence of randomly distributed spherical inclusions
of another porous material. The size of the inclusions
is assumed to be mesoscopic, i.e., much larger than an
individual pore size, but much smaller than the wave-
length of a fast compressional and shear wave. The
problem is solved by firstly considering the interac-
tion of a plane elastic P-wave with a single spherical
inclusion, then by applying an approximate theory of
multiple scattering (Waterman & Truell, 1961), the
effect of an ensemble of inclusions is estimated.
2 SINGLE INCLUSION
Following Berryman (1985) we consider the problem
of scattering of an elastic wave in a poroelastic medium
(called host or background medium) by a spherical
inclusion, having radius a, of another poroelastic mate-
rial. Specifically, we consider a fast compressional
plane-wave incident on a spherical inclusion. When
this incident wave interacts with the inclusion, it pro-
duces fast and slow compressional waves and a shear
wave in the background (called scattered or reflected
waves) and waves of the same three kinds inside the
inclusion (called refracted waves). We assume the size
of the inclusion to be much smaller than the fast com-
pressional wave, no limitation is required with respect
to the wavelength of the Biots slow wave. This is
the main difference from Berrymans long-wavelength
solution assuming the size of the inclusion to be much
smaller than both wavelength of fast compressional
wave and wavelength of Biots slow wave. The elas-
tic properties of both porous materials saturated by
a compressible fluid are assumed to be described by
Gassmanns (1951) equation. The dynamic behavior of
both materials is described by Biots (1962) equations
of poroelasticity. We consider a porous background
medium with uniformly distributed porosity whose
pores are filled with a viscous fluid with bulk modulus
Kf , density f and viscosity . The grains of the solid
are characterized by bulk modulus Kg , shear modulus
g and density g . The solid skeleton formed from the
Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
grains is characterized by bulk modulus K0 , shear mod-
ulus 0 , density 0 and permeability . The inclusion
parameters are denoted by the same symbols with a
prime. These poroelastic constants are related as (Biot,
1962):
where K is the undrained bulk modulus of the fluid
saturated medium.
The solution of a harmonic plane wave field in
spherical coordinates, in terms, of spherical Bessel
functions and Legendre polynomials is well known
(Yamakawa, 1962, Berryman, 1985). The solution
must obey boundary conditions on the poroelastic
interface, i.e. continuity of normal and tangential
stresses, and continuity of solid and relative fluid
displacements (Deresiewicz & Skalak, 1963). The
analysis and derivation of Biots slow wave amplitude
is given in (Ciz & Gurevich, 2005). We extend this
analysis and derive the fast P-wave amplitude scat-
tered by the spherical poroelastic inclusion embedded
in the poroelastic host medium. The expressions for
the fast P-wave amplitude will be used for computing
the attenuation and dispersion.
The solution for the radial component of the dis-
placement of the scattered wave into the background
medium in the far field is
where k+ is the wave number of the fast compres-
sional wave, k represents the wave number of the
slow compressional wave and Pn ( cos ) is the Leg-
endre polynomial of the order n. The coefficients for
the scattered fast wave are Bn+ for n = 0, 1, 2; for the
scattered slow wave, they are Bn for n = 0, 1, 2.
The higher order terms neglected for the scattered
fast wave are of the order (k+ a)5 and therefore small
(Yamakawa, 1962). In the analysis below we also
neglect the slow wave coefficient B1 and coefficients
Bn3 . It has been shown by Ciz & Gurevich (2005) that
the contribution from these terms are proportional to
k+ a, and thus these terms are small (B1,n3 <<B0 and
B1,n3 <<B2 ) We can therefore conclude that for small
(compared to the wavelength of the incident wave)
inclusions the first-order term corresponding to the
202
reflected slow wave can be neglected. The scattering
amplitude for n = 0 is given by the expression:
where the prime denotes parameters inside the inclu-
(1)
sion, A0 is the amplitude of the incident P-wave, h1 ,
(1)
h0 , j0 , j1 define spherical Bessel functions of orders
0 and 1, H
= K
+ 4/3,
= k
a, and
= k
a.
The full expression for n = 2 is very complicated, but
can be simplified assuming that the amplitude of the
scattered fast (normal) compressional and shear waves
are well approximated by the solution of the equiva-
lent elastic problem. This assumption yields a simple
approximation for the amplitude of the scattered slow
wave, which is quite accurate for a wide range of mate-
rial properties and is sufficient for the analysis of the
scattering amplitude as a function of frequency. This
expression reads
(1) (1)
where h1 , h2 , j1 , j2 define spherical Bessel func-
tions of orders 1 and 2, ,
represent fluid saturated
Lam coefficients in the host and inclusion. In the
long-wavelength limit equation (4) reduces to the long-
= K0
+
C
are fluid
wavelength approximation of B0 derived by Berryman
(1985). In the low-contrast limit equations (3) and
(4) reduce to the solution derived by Gurevich et al.
(1998) using the Born approximation. Figure 1 shows
the comparison between these solutions. As expected,
these solutions are identical in case of low-contrast
of elastic parameters between the inclusion and host
medium. However, these two solutions differ when the
contrast is large as this violates the assumption for the
Born approximation. In the low frequency limit, Biots
slow wave amplitude scales with 3/2 while for inclu-
sions larger than the wavelength of Biots slow wave,
the scattering amplitude is proportional to 1/2 .
To derive the fast compressional wave coeffi-
cients of the scattered wave amplitude needed for the
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
0 Born and present work - low contrast
present work - high contrast
Born approx. - high contrast
-2
Log Amplitude
-4
-6
~1/2
-8
~3/2
-10
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Log Frequency (normalized)
Figure 1. Scattering amplitude of the Biot slow wave versus
normalized frequency. Derived solution and Born approxi-
mation (solid line) are identical for low contrast in material
parameters. Born approximation (dashed line) and derived
solution (dotted line) are different for high contrast in material
properties.
attenuation analysis, we use the same concept. We
solve the 4 4 system of boundary conditions for
the coefficient of order n = 0 at the inclusion sur-
face and the 6 6 system of boundary conditions for
n = 2. These solutions give the expressions for the fast
compressional wave coefficients B0+ and B2+ :
and
where K = K0 + C and K
saturated bulk moduli. Provided the coefficient B1
is small, the coefficient B1+ can be approximated
by the effective elastic solution given by Yamakawa
(1962). In the long-wavelength limit the coefficient B0+
from expression (5) converts to the long-wavelength
approximation derived by Berryman (1985).
It is easy to check that, if the fluid bulk modulus
vanishes Kf 0, then C 0 so B0 0 and both (5)
and (6) reduce to the expressions B0 and B2 in the
elastic limit derived by Yamakawa, (1962). In sum-
mary, derived expressions (5) and (6) are therefore
consistent in the limits with the known exact long-
wavelength solution of Berryman, (1985) and with the
solution for elastic wave scattering from a spherical
inclusion derived by Yamakawa, (1962).
3 ATTENUATION AND DISPERSION
To compute the frequency dependent velocity and
attenuation, the coefficients for the fast and slow com-
pressional wave amplitudes are used in the multiple
scattering theorem of Waterman and Truell (1961).
The total wave field at any point is the sum of the
incident and all scattered wave fields. From the multi-
ple scattering field calculation, the complex effective
wave number keff is:
4 ATTENUATION IN THE MODEL
WITH POROELASTIC SPHERICAL
INCLUSIONS
To derive an analytical expression for the attenua-
tion we substitute the scatter amplitude for the fast
compressional wave into equation (11).

where = (4/3)a3 is the fractional volume of the

scatterers. Substituting full expressions for B0+ and B2+
from (5) and (6), we obtain
where k+ = /v+ is the real wave number of the fast
P-wave, is the density or number of scatterers per
unit volume. Scatterer amplitudes f (0), f () are

where in general, the coefficients Bn+ are obtained

from the solution of a 6 6 system of boundary con-
ditions satisfied on the surface of a single spherical Noting that, only two terms (n = 0,2) of Biots slow
inclusion. wave amplitude significantly contribute to the atten-
By making a weak scattering approximation and uation (Ciz & Gurevich, 2005). Furthermore, the
neglecting quadratic terms, the effective wave number attenuation given by (13) is due to mesoscopic fluid
(7) reduces to flow induced at the boundary of randomly distributed
poroelastic spherical inhomogeneities in poroelastic
host medium.
In the special case of patchy saturation, where only
the fluid properties differ between the inclusion and
This situation arises physically under circumstances the host medium, the attenuation is
where the number of scatterers per unit volume is suffi-
ciently small or where the individual scatterer is weak.
The latter arises when the material of the scatterer has
elastic properties very similar to those of the matrix
medium or when the gradient of the elastic properties
is small.
The real part of equation (9) represents the effec-
tive velocity veff dispersion in media with a low
concentration of scatterers, it is given by Before we plot effective attenuation in the full fre-
quency range we analyze the asymptotical behavior at
low and high frequencies.

The imaginary part of equation (9) gives the dimen- 5 ANALYTICAL ASYMPTOTES AND
sionless attenuation (inverse quality factor) NUMERICAL EXAMPLE

To determine the effects of attenuation at low and high

The above expressions (10) and (11) allow us to model
the dispersion and attenuation caused by the scattering
of a plane elastic wave by poroelastic inclusions ran-
domly distributed throughout a poroelastic medium.
In this study we investigate the special case of disper-
sion and attenuation using the amplitudes derived in
the previous section.
frequency limits, we carry out the following deriva-
tion. In the low-frequency limit we substitute into
(13) spherical Bessel functions with their approximate
expressions for small arguments, i.e. | |<<1. After
some manipulation we obtain

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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
where,
For the high-frequency limit we substitute into (13)
spherical Bessel functions with their approximations
for large arguments, i.e. | | >>1. This gives the high
frequency asymptote for effective attenuation
Expressions (15) and (18) represent asymptotes of
elastic wave attenuation in poroelastic media having
low concentrations of spherical inclusions of another
porous material.
The high frequency asymptote (18) is consistent
with asymptotic behaviour of solutions to the gen-
eral diffusion equation at high frequencies. Diffusive
processes scale in the high frequency limit as 1/2
and Biots slow wave is described by the diffusion
equation. Our high frequency asymptote is also con-
sistent with the Born approximation (Gurevich et al.,
1998), whereas our low-frequency asymptote differs.
The Born approximation scales with frequency as
1/2 . As near field terms in the wave field expan-
sion were neglected by Gurevich et al. (1998), their
low frequency asymptote is incorrect. Our low fre-
quency asymptote (15) shows that attenuation scales
with frequency as .
Since the derived expression for effective attenua-
tion (13) is rather complex, we carry out numerical
computations to study the attenuation effect in the
whole frequency range. The frequency dependence of
the attenuation has a form of a relaxation peak, with
the maximum of the dimensionless attenuation at a
frequency at which the wavelength of the Biots slow
wave is approximately equal to the characteristic size
of the inclusion. Figure 2 confirms the asymptotical
behavior derived. The attenuation maximum shifts to
higher frequencies as the inclusion radius decreases.
6 COMPARISON WITH PERIODIC MODELS
We consider three mesoscopic models with regular
distribution of patches:
The first model of patchy saturation was proposed
by White (1975). It consists of a periodic array of
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
-1
-2
~
-3
Log Attenuation
-4
-5
-6 ~-1/2
a=1m
a = 0.1 m
-7
a = 0.01 m
-8
-2 0 2 4 6
Log Frequency
Figure 2. Effective attenuation of seismic P-wave seismic
velocity in the poroelastic medium with spherical poroelastic
inclusions.Attenuation maximum shifts to higher frequencies
as the inclusion radius a decreases.
cubic cells. Each cell is approximated using a con-
centric sphere geometry, where the inner sphere is
saturated by one fluid type and the outer shell is sat-
urated by another fluid. The porous frame properties
are everywhere uniform.
Johnson (2001) developed a patchy saturation
model for a periodic ensemble of fluid patches of
arbitrary but identical shape. For a given shape,
Johnson (2001) derived asymptotic solutions for
low and high frequencies. The solution for interme-
diate frequencies was constructed using a branching
function that ensures causality of the solution and
convergence to low and high frequency results. For
comparison we assume the simple geometry of con-
centric spherical patches, equivalent to those used
by White (1975).
A recent model proposed by Pride & Berryman
(2003) considers the porous medium as a double-
porosity dual-permeability medium, that is, an
ensemble of representative volumes each contain-
ing two distinct porous materials. For our study we
use one variant of this theory which assumes that
all frame properties of the two materials are the
same and only fluid properties differ. Although the
model of Pride et al. allows arbitrary geometries to
be considered, explicit analytical solutions are hard
to formulate for geometries other then concentric
spheres.
The scattering model is limited to low concentration
of inclusions and therefore the following situations
were compared: (a) water inclusions (030% satura-
tion) in a gas filled background medium, and (b) low
concentration of gas inclusions (05% saturation) in
water-filled background medium. The models were
tested for three different gas types with bulk moduli

Figure 3. Attenuation due to water saturated spherical
patches (10% water saturation) in an air-filled poroelastic
host medium.
Figure 4. Dispersion due to water saturated spherical
patches (10% water saturation) in an air-filled poroelastic
host medium.
Kgas = 0.0001 GPa (air), Kgas = 0.1 GPa (light gas) and
Kgas = 0.25 GPa (heavy gas). Figures 3 and 4 show the
attenuation and dispersion curves for water inclusions
in an air-filled background medium. The concentra-
tion of the water inclusions is 10%. All four models
exhibit the same attenuation behavior, scaling with
at low frequencies and 1/2 at high frequencies. The
random model shows slightly lower attenuation. The
velocity dispersion curves are in excellent agreement
and all models fit the static limit given by Woods for-
mula (lower bound) and the no-flow limit expressed
by Hills theorem (upper bound).
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
7 CONCLUSIONS
The main result of this study is the developed quanti-
tative model of scattering of elastic waves by spherical
poroelastic inclusions randomly distributed in a poro-
elastic host medium. We have studied the attenuation
and dispersion of the incident fast compressional wave
due to mode conversion into Biots slow wave. This
mechanism concerns wave-induced flow caused by
heterogeneity in the elastic moduli at mesoscopic
scales. Mesoscopic heterogeneity over the scale of a
wavelength can be responsible for considerable atten-
uation. At low frequencies, the attenuation scales with
frequency as 1/2 and in the high frequency limit the
attenuation is proportional to frequency as 1/2 .
The quantitative comparison of compared models
shows very good agreement for water inclusion satu-
rations of up to 30%. The scattering model slightly
underestimates the attenuation in comparison with
other models. We conclude that, in contrast to 1-D case,
random but isotropic distribution of heterogeneities
in a porous medium produces essentially the same
attenuation and dispersion as their regular distribution.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the Centre of Excellence
for Exploration and Production Geophysics, Curtin
Reservoir Geophysics Consortium, CSIRO Postdoc-
toral Fellowship Program and CSIRO postgraduate
scholarships.
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