Fracture Identification By

sonic
Slowness time coherency processing
• It is the process required to extract p wave, S wave and stonely wave
• It applied on array sonic tools, (8 receiver, or 13 receiver)
• Three parameters
control the
coherency picking,
time, step and
window
Final output
• The red track show the
highest coherency and this is
represent the P wave then
the S wave
Stonely wave
➢Low frequency fluid pressure pulse.
➢Piston-like propagation along
borehole wall.
➢Energy decays exponentially away
from borehole wall.
➢Sensitive to fractures and
permeable zones.
What is the Stoneley Wave?
• The Stoneley wave is a borehole mode (Normal Mode 0)
• excited by monopole sources, at low frequency
• dispersive (slowness varies with frequency)

• At low frequency (l > 10 HD):

• • Becomes the tube wave,
• • Propagates as a piston like compression of the borehole fluid,
• • Sensitive to the shear rigidity of the formation.

• At high frequency:
• • Becomes a surface wave,
• • Tends to the mud slowness in hard formations
Tube Wave Propagation
Stoneley Wave Measurements
• Slowness: Responds to pore fluid mobility
• Permeable zones
• Opened fractures and groups of fractures

• Reflections: Respond to discontinuities

• Isolated fractures and groups of fractures

• Attenuation: Responds to fluid mobility

• Isolated opened fractures
• Multiple distributed fractures
• Permeable zones

• Sensitive to borehole size changes and bed boundaries

• Sensitive to borehole fluid and formation properties (shear)

Petrophysical Applications
• Fracture identification
➢ Matrix permeability for porosity >10%
• Qualitative permeability estimation for fractures
• Complimentary to image interpretation
➢ Drilling induced or open natural fractures?
• Complete acoustic characterization of the borehole
➢ When shear anisotropy and compressional are also evaluated
Stoneley waveform response at a fracture
The Stoneley is a guided wave travelling inside
the borehole.

The Stoneley slowness is primarily a function of

the mud slowness and the formation shear
modulus.

The RX-TX spacing in the Sonic Scanner for the

standard Stoneley varies from 11 to 17 ft.

The blow dot represent the arrival from source

to receiver

The red dot represent reflection from the

fracture surface at later time

With moving up the reflected wave will appear

earlier until it will give the chevron shape on
VDL.
Example of fracture