Computer simulation of crosswell seismic propagation and determination of elastic parameters

Abstract

The potential usefulness of crosswell seismic measurement in determining the dynamic elastic parameters of subsurface material is demonstrated. It is shown that tomographic inversion of seismic wave travel time for a combined borehole to borehole and borehole to surface configuration provides the characteristics of shape, size, and orientation of anomalies. The travel time for each source and receiver paths are computed and are inverted to determine the elastic parameters. The procedure described in this paper can prove to be economic and less time consuming in mapping anomalous regions such as soft pockets, tunnels, and buried pipes that are quite often encountered by civil engineers during site selection for large construction projects. Key words: crosshole measurement, tomographic inversion, dynamic parameters, site investigation, seismic investigation.