Graduation date: 1998

Many hydrocarbon reservoirs have sufficient porosity but low permeability (for example, tight gas sands and coal beds). However, such reservoirs are often naturally fractured. The fracture patterns in these reservoirs can control flow and transport properties, and therefore, play an important role in drilling production wells. On the scale of seismic wavelengths, closely spaced parallel fractures behave like an anisotropic media, which precludes the response of individual fractures in the seismic data. There are a number of fracture parameters which are needed to fully characterize a fractured reservoir. However, seismic data may reveal only certain fracture parameters and those are fracture orientation, crack density and fracture infill. Most of the widely used fracture characterization methods such as Swave splitting analysis or amplitude vs. offset and azimuth (AVOA) analysis fail to render desired results in laterally varying media. I have conducted a systematic study of the response of fractured reservoirs with laterally varying elastic and fracture properties, and I have developed a scheme to invert for the fracture parameters. I have implemented a 3D finite-difference method to generate multicomponent synthetic seismic data in general anisotropic media. I applied the finite-difference algorithm in both Standard and Rotated Staggered grids. Standard Staggered grid is used for media having symmetry up to orthorhombic (isotropic, transversely isotropic, and orthorhombic), whereas Rotated Staggered grid is implemented for monoclinic and triclinic media. I have also developed an efficient and accurate ray-bending algorithm to compute seismic traveltimes in 3D anisotropic media. AVOA analysis is equivalent to the first-order Born approximation. However, AVOA analysis can be applied only in a laterally uniform medium, whereas the Born-approximation does not pose any restriction on the subsurface structure. I have developed an inversion scheme based on a ray-Born approximation to invert for the fracture parameters. Best results are achieved when both vertical and horizontal components of the seismic data are inverted simultaneously. I have also developed an efficient positivity constraint which forbids the inverted fracture parameters to be negative in value. I have implemented the inversion scheme in the frequency domain and I show, using various numerical examples, that all frequency samples up to the Nyquist are not required to achieve desired inversion results.

The instabilities of shallow shear flows are analyzed to study exchanges processes across shear flows in inland and coastal waters, coastal and ocean currents, and winds across the thermal-and-moisture fronts. These shear flows observed in nature are driven by gravity and governed by the shallow water equations (SWE). A highly accurate, and robust, computational scheme has been developed to solve these SWE. Time integration of the SWE was carried out using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta scheme. A third-order upwind bias finite difference approximation known as QUICK (Quadratic Upstream Interpolation of Convective Kinematics) was employed for the spatial discretization. The numerical oscillations were controlled using flux limiters for Total Variation Diminishing (TVD). Direct numerical simulations (DNS) were conducted for the base flow with the TANH velocity profile, and the base flow in the form of a jet with the SECH velocity profile. The depth across the base flows was selected for the' balance of the driving forces. In the rotating flow simulation, the Coriolis force in the lateral direction was perfectly in balance with the pressure gradient across the shear flow during the simulation. The development of instabilities in the shear flows was considered for a range of convective Froude number, friction number, and Rossby number. The DNS of the SWE has produced linear results that are consistent with classical stability analyses based on the normal mode approach, and new results that had not been determined by the classical method. The formation of eddies, and the generation of shocklets subsequent to the linear instabilities were computed as part of the DNS. Without modelling the small scales, the simulation was able to produce the correct turbulent spreading rate in agreement with the experimental observations. The simulations have identified radiation damping, in addition to friction damping, as a primary factor of influence on the instability of the shear flows admissible to waves. A convective Froude number correlated the energy lost due to radiation damping. The friction number determined the energy lost due to friction. A significant fraction of available energy produced by the shear flow is lost due the radiation of waves at high convective Froude number. This radiation of gravity waves in shallow gravity-stratified shear flow, and its dependence on the convective Froude number, is shown to be analogous to the Mach-number effect in compressible flow. Furthermore, and most significantly, is the discovery from the simulation the crucial role of the radiation damping in the development of shear flows in the rotating earth. Rings and eddies were produced by the rotating-flow simulations in a range of Rossby numbers, as they were observed in the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic, Jet Stream in the atmosphere, and various fronts across currents in coastal waters.

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