The music of marine seismic: A marine vibrator system based on folded surfaces

Abstract

Marine vibrators have bespoke geophysical benefits that are yet to be harnessed because of robustness and efficiency issues. We have developed a new marine vibrator source technology that is efficient and stable. The source technology overcomes the historical problems of inefficiency and robustness by using folded surface technology and resonance frequency tuning. We show measured output examples that demonstrate that the folded surface concept combined with small displacements can provide the required output levels. Our source system consists of a low-frequency module covering 1–10 Hz and a high-frequency module covering 10–125 Hz. The source control system has shown high stability and precision and can handle harmonic distortion. With the aid of synthetic data examples, we demonstrate that seismic data acquired using marine vibrators in either intermittent or continuous mode can be processed. Finally, we demonstrate the environmental friendliness of the source in comparison to air gun-based sources.