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Forced oscillation measurements of seismic attenuation in fluid saturated sandstone

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Abstract

Adopting the method of forced oscillation, attenuation was studied in Fontainebleau sandstone (porosity 10%, permeability 10 mD) at seismic frequencies (1–100 Hz). Confining pressures of 5, 10, and 15 MPa were chosen to simulate reservoir conditions. First, the strain effect on attenuation was investigated in the dry sample for 11 different strains across the range 1 × 10−6–8 × 10−6, at the confining pressure of 5 MPa. The comparison showed that a strain of at least 5 × 10−6 is necessary to obtain a good signal to noise ratio. These results also indicate that nonlinear effects are absent for strains up to 8 × 10−6. For all the confining pressures, attenuation in the dry rock was low, while partial (90%) and full (100%) saturation with water yielded a higher magnitude and frequency dependence of attenuation. The observed high and frequency dependent attenuation was interpreted as being caused by squirt flow.

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Acknowledgements

Petrobras co-funded this project. We would like to thank Claudio Madonna for his support in the laboratory and Prof. Jean-Pierre Burg for providing a conducive research environment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Shankar Subramaniyan

  2. Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Beatriz Quintal

  3. International Geothermal Centre and Ruhr Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Erik H. Saenger

Authors
  1. Shankar Subramaniyan
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  2. Beatriz Quintal
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  3. Erik H. Saenger
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Correspondence to Shankar Subramaniyan.

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Subramaniyan, S., Quintal, B. & Saenger, E.H. Forced oscillation measurements of seismic attenuation in fluid saturated sandstone. Acta Geophys. 65, 165–172 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-017-0014-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-017-0014-0

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