IPA18-67-G
PROCEEDINGS, INDONESIAN PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION
Forty-Second Annual Convention & Exhibition, May 2018
DEFINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FAULT THROW AND FAULT DAMAGE ZONE
WIDTH FROM SEISMIC DATA BY UTILISING SEISMIC ATTRIBUTES
Chrisnawaty Sirait*
Gaynor Paton**
ABSTRACT
 
Fault damage zones have been previously
investigated in relation to various fault parameters.
However, most of the previous research is outcrop-
based studies, and only a few of them have sought to
investigate the fault damage zone in seismic data.
The focus of this study is to investigate fault damage
zone width in relation to fault throw from seismic
data utilising seismic attributes. Seismic attributes
are primarily used to provide a measurable width of
damage zone. The workflow applied in this study is
first finding the appropriate attributes that capture the
fault damage zone and then growing a 3D geobody
using the attributes which represents the fault
damage zone morphology. The study is undertaken
on time-migrated seismic data in Indian field which
is located in the Exmouth Sub-basin, a part of the
Northern Carnarvon Basin. The data used is a subset
of a full 3D volume and is 12.5 x 3.8 km in size.
Using the combination of Structurally Oriented
Semblance, Dip and Tensor attributes, a number of
faults trending NE-SW, were successfully mapped
out and used to analyse the size of fault damage zone
and fault throws. The maximum fault throw attained
from Fault-2 and Fault-37 are 34ms and 24ms
respectively while the maximum damage zone
widths are 204m and 192m respectively. Despite the
geobody limitation due to resolution issue, a positive
nonlinear relationship following power-law
distribution is found to be an appropriate scaling of
fault damage zone with fault throw. The relationship
is followed with a certain amount of error estimation
which is presumed to result from a large variation
and scattering of data.
Keywords: Fault damage zone; Fault throw;
Geological Scaling; Seismic Attributes.
INTRODUCTION
 
Faults are not simply defined as a discrete planar
discontinuity across offset stratal reflectors. They
create an area which can contain deformation bands,
* University of Leeds
** GeoTeric, Newcastle upon Tyne
secondary faults, joints and folds enclosing the fault
core zone known as a fault damage zone (FDZ;
Iacopini, D. et al., 2016; Dutzer, J-F. et al., 2010;
Libak, A., et al., 2017). The schematic figure of a
FDZ is well illustrated in Figure 1.1.
There have been some previous studies that have
attempted to investigate the fault damage zones from
seismic data. Some of them are Dutzer et al. (2010)
and Long and Imber (2010) who investigated the
fault properties and fault related deformation, Botter
et al. (2014) who examined the seismic response to a
normal fault in 2D synthetic model, and the most
recent study was undertaken by Iacopini et al. (2016)
who used seismic attributes and some image
processing methods to investigate “seismic facies”
within fault zones. However, only a few studies have
focussed on the scaling of fault damage zones and
fault throw from seismic data due to a seismic
resolvability issue. Most of the studies investigated
the relationship based on outcrop data. Knott et al.
(1996) discovered that the fault damage zone varies
with the throw and was controlled by mechanical and
lithology factors and Schueller et al. (2013) claimed
that there is a non-linear relationship between the
fault damage zone width and fault throw within a
sandstone lithology which follows a lognormal
distribution. The same relationship was revealed by
Dmitriy Kolyukhin and Anita Torabi (2012).
Nevertheless, the relationship in seismic data has yet
to be clarified meanwhile a defined relationship of
fault damage zone width and fault throw can be very
advantageous in some aspects of seismic
interpretation and reservoir analysis such as fluid
flow analysis, juxtaposition analysis in potential
sealing fault, and fault growth & propagation
analysis. This project, therefore, will primarily
investigate the FDZ from seismic data, acquired from
Indian field, located in the Exmouth Sub-basin.
Exmouth Sub-basin, is a part of the Northern
Carnarvon Basin that lies on the north-western
Australia Margin (Figure 2). Based on Australia
Offshore Petroleum Exploration Acreage Release
(2012) and some authors who investigated the
Exmouth Sub-basin (Hocking, 1990; Arditto, 1993,
Jablonski, 1997; Tindale et al., 1998; Bussel et al.,
2001; Norvick, 2002; Longley et al., 2002; Smith et
al., 2003; Scibiorski et al., 2005), this basin formed
in response to the breakup of Pangaea during
lithospheric stretching.
The Exmouth Sub-basin, in particular, underwent an
extension scheme in the Jurassic and produced syn-
rift subbasins in the Early Cretaceous. The dominant
trend was defined as northeast-southwest. The pre-
rift section is comprised of a series of Permian and
Lower to Middle Triassic sediments, overlain by syn-
rift sediments sections; a massive fluvial-deltaic to
marginal marine sediments of the Mungaroo
Formation, the deeper Early Cretaceous–Jurassic
sections, at which all observed faults are
approximated to be (Figure 3). With no well data
provided, but regional geology, the faults are
approximated to run through the same lithology
which is fluvial-marine to deltaic. Further discussion
will cover all the limitations of FDZ analysis in
seismic data and the evaluation of the used method.
METHODS
 
Dutzer et al. (2009) and Iacopini & Butler (2011)
specified FDZ as disrupted structures or deformation
as a result of initiation, propagation and interaction
of faults. Therefore, they presumed that the presence
of an FDZ in seismic data could be characterised by
a chaotic and discontinuous reflector geometry
enclosing the fault core. Different from the fault core,
the FDZ has no obscure displacement where it
becomes subjected to seismic resolution issue.
Owing to this the FDZ could be hard to resolve in
seismic data, so seismic attributes are then used to
identify them.
The seismic attribute is a method that samples the
seismic waveforms and converts them to a discrete
unit so-called “voxel” that is measured and
quantified through an algorithm (Acharya and Ray,
2005; Chopra and Marfurt, 2005). Every voxel is
filled with an attribute-associated colour (shown in
Figure 4).
The application of seismic attributes was
important in the three main steps in this project.
They encompass data conditioning, fault
expression, and geobody extraction. All the
processes were done in GeoTeric Software.
Data Conditioning
 
Data conditioning is one of the most important
elements before applying attributes to the data
because seismic attributes will not only highlight
targeted features in the data, but also boost the other
unexpected features such as noise. Data conditioning
in this project is done in two steps; noise cancellation
and spectral enhancement. For noise cancellation,
only random noise cancellation is applied to the data
as there was minimal coherent noise. Random noise
cancellation is achieved using the TDiffusion
algorithm which is a structurally oriented low pass
filter that solves partial differential equations
through time (GeoTeric, 2017). The significance of
random noise cancellation is to ensure that it gets rid
of the random noise only, not the signal. Therefore,
it is important to continuously do visual checking to
the data before and after the noise cancellation
(shown in Figure 5). That becomes more relevant
because FDZ indeed has similar seismic responses
with noise; high frequency and chaotic. After
undertaking the noise cancellation, it is necessary to
analyse the frequency spectrum of the data because
noise cancellation could likely damage the primary
signal. Spectral enhancement involves interactively
modifying the frequency spectra of the data to
uncover the hidden reflectors. This step becomes
important to improve the vertical resolution as two
factors affecting the vertical resolution are the
bandwidth and the slopes of the frequency spectra.
This project applied “spectral shaping with
enhancement” to shape the amplitude spectra of the
data to follow the expected spectra (represented by
the red line Figure 6). It works like bandpass filter
but with weighted factors.
Fault Expression
 
Different fault attributes highlight faults and fault
damage zones based on detecting different
expressions in the seismic data (phase breaks,
curvature, amplitude cut-offs). The two main steps
involve attribute and filter size selection. To select
the appropriate attributes, it is necessary to
understand the seismic disturbance characteristics
caused by the targeted features. The presence of the
FDZ could affect the amplitude, phase, and
frequency of the data, represented by amplitude
discontinuity or amplitude reduction, phase changes,
a relatively high frequency, low similarity, and low
signal-to-noise (Childs et al., 2003; Walsh et al.,
2003a, b). In determining the filter size, knowing the
voxel size is required. Voxel size is determined by
the bin size of seismic, which in this case, has a
smaller size than the vertical and horizontal
resolution of the data.
A number of attributes have been tested to
investigate their ability to capture fault features but
ultimately SO Semblance, Dip, and Tensor were the
three selected attributes used throughout the project.
Structurally Oriented Semblance (known as SO
Semblance) uses a cross-correlation algorithm to
measure the similarity between two traces or seismic
waveforms in 3D analysis window (Chopra and
Marfurt, 2005). SO Semblance is used as it is phase
instead of amplitude dependent hence it identifies
phase breaks quite well (D. Iacopini et al., 2016).
Faults or fractures are characterised by low
semblance. The second attribute applied was a
Tensor attribute which is very sensitive to amplitude
changes along the plane of the structure (D. Iacopini
et al., 2016). It is expected to capture lateral
amplitude changes across fault features. The last
attribute used was Dip. Dip highlights the local
reflector orientation in the data. The true dip is the
angle computed in a vertical plane perpendicular to
the strike (Chopra and Marfurt, 2005). As the three
attributes seemed quite effective to pick up the FDZ,
this project decided to try them in combination.
Using CMY (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) blends, the
combined attributes give a more complete image
than the individual attributes (Figure 7). The three
attributes were then combined to be used for geobody
extraction.
Geobody Extraction
 
A geobody is a representation of the 3D volume of
faults extracted from seismic attribute (Botter et al.,
2016). The growth of a geobody is controlled by the
attribute and the parameters which control the
growth of the geobody, in this case settings such as
(1) acceptance level, (2) mesh granularity, (3)
maximum adaptation step, and (4) seed voxel. For
faults in particular it needs a moderate acceptance
level which relates to how much data are included, a
smaller mesh granularity that includes more points to
shape the fault, and a smaller adaptation step or lesser
maximum growth in every single adaptation.
Eventually, the more important parameter to be
discussed is the seed voxel. The seed voxel is the
starting values used by geobody to track in order to
create a full geobody. It was found that where the
seed voxel is first picked affects to the ability of the
geobody to grow. The geobody of both Fault-2 &
Fault-37 is discovered to better use the horizontal
slice voxel seeding (Figure 8).
Geobody extraction enables us to measure the
damage zone thickness more accurately because it
represents the whole deformation (Botter et al.,
2016). As the geobody is a 3D volume, it inherently
has 3 dimensions of length (x, y, z). This project took
only the y-direction measurement, perpendicular
with dominant direction of the faults segments which
is z-direction (Figure 9). The damage zone width
measurement was done using the thickness attributes
that converts the number of voxels to meter units.
Since each fault throw may have several FDZ
thickness, only the average width is taken, illustrated
in Figure 9.
RESULTS
 
Even though the combined attribute seems able to
map out the FDZ, the geobody shows its limitation
in growing the body of an FDZ as it is expected to
grow enclosing the fault core (Figure 10). It tends to
spread excessively away from the fault. Therefore to
get sufficient data, some geobodies were produced
by varying the parameters particularly the acceptance
level and mesh granularity. This study focussed on 2
faults; Fault-2 and Fault-37, categorised as normal
faults. The measured maximum throws for Fault-2
and Fault-37 are respectively 34ms and 29ms and the
maximum damage zone widths respectively 204m
and 192m. As the relationship could be either linear
or non-linear, two scalings were investigated to seek
the most appropriate scaling of fault throw and FDZ
width.
For linear relationship, the graphs use fault throw as
x-axis (in milliseconds), FDZ width as y-axis (in
metre), and distance along strike as z-axis (in metre).
Based on the observation to Fault-2 and Fault-37, the
plots show a large variation across the range of fault
throws, and an even more significant error in the
larger throws. The linear regression method used is
based upon York best fitting (2014) that manages to
give the equation with error expression in gradient
and intercept. Each equation is stated in the plot
(illustrated in Figure 11a & 11b). It is supported by
the reasonably high error estimation obtained from
both faults. The intercept error ranges from 37m to
47m and the gradient error ranges from 2m to 4m for
every ms of fault throw. Yet, a relatively low
Rsquared (R2) is also acquired from both faults,
ranges from 0.42 to 0.59. This result could imply that
the linear relationship may not be appropriate to
describe the relationship between fault throw and
FDZ width. The non-zero intercept gained in this
relationship is also very hard to explain in a real case
because it got a non-zero DZ width at the zero throw
(fault tips), which is very unlikely.
The non-linear case was tested by transforming the
fault throw and FDZ width to logarithmic scale. This
transformation seems to produce a very nice straight
line compared to the linear case. Looking to the R2,
the non-linear relationship increases the Rsquared to
range from 0.56 to 0.79 which indicates a better
fitting (shown in Figure 12a & 12b). The positive
slope specifies a positive relationship between fault
throw and FDZ width. In conclusion, the relationship
between fault throw and FDZ width in seismic data
is most likely to be expressed as positive non-linear
relationship following power law distribution, the
same conclusion gathered from outcrop-based
studies.
On top of that, from this study, it is also possible to
describe the normal fault evolution from seismic data
as well as to illustrate the damage zone width
throughout the fault growth. The plot shown in
Figure 13 demonstrates that a normal fault
commonly starts with zero displacement at the tips,
then grows progressively away to the other end. The
FDZ width scale appears to align with fault
displacement scale which increases towards the
maximum displacement (D-Max) and gradually
decreases to zero when it reaches the another fault
tips.
Some limitations of the study
 
Owing to the fact that the geobody is growing using
an attribute based on the information (amplitude,
phase, and frequency) from seismic data, the quality
and parameters of the seismic attributes has a
significant role. The most common issue in seismic
data is noise. Although the noise cancellation has
been applied, most likely random noise still remains
in the data and may have been included to the
growing of geobody as it has similar characteristics
with FDZ: chaotic and high frequency. The second
issue is the seismic resolution. Very high-resolution
data is needed to sample a metre scale of FDZ. The
frequency limitation of wavelet and asymmetrical
wavelet due to the ‘earth filter’ could exacerbate the
resolution. The bin size is another issue. The bin
dimension of the data is a rectangle that has a larger
size in the inline direction (14 x 12.5m). Libak, A. et
al. (2017) revealed that the faults or features which
oriented parallel to the shortest dimension of
stacking bins would have lower resolution than the
features that are oriented parallel to the longest
dimension. It could be applicable in this case as the
FDZ width (measured in the y-direction) is parallel
to the shortest dimension (crossline). The other
issues could be due to seismic processing quality or
tuning effect.
CONCLUSION
 
This study uses 2 faults (Fault-2 & Fault-37),
trending NE-SW, to investigate the relationship
between fault throw and FDZ width with maximum
throws respectively of 34ms and 29ms and maximum
damage zone widths respectively of 204m and 192m.
Some conclusions could be taken from this study:
1. The damage zones are mapped out using a
combination of SO semblance, dip, and tensor
attributes. The rational of selecting those three
attributes is because they can pick out the FDZ
quite nicely and cover the limitations had by
each of them.
2. Geobody extractions have some limitations that
should be anticipated and recognised in analyses,
such as noise, seismic resolution, and bin size.
3. Despite the geobody limitation, the best
relationship to describe the damage zone width
and throw is likely to be a positive non-linear
relationship following power-law distributions,
similar results obtained from previous outcrop-
based studies.
4. However, the results may not be comparable in
general due to a limited number of faults
investigated, therefore, further investigation is
recommended.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
 
This project was carried out as part of the MSc
Exploration Geophysics, on which I was funded by
Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education. First of
all, I would like to thank my supervisors in Leeds and
GeoTeric, Dr Estelle Mortimer and Dr Gaynor Paton
respectively for giving me guidance and support
throughout the project. I would also like to thank
Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education for their
immense support during my study. My thanks goes
as well to Dr Adam Booth my “unofficial”
supervisor at the University of Leeds for his guidance
in injury time on the Geophysical side of the project
and MATLAB code.
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Figure 1 - A schematic picture that illustrates fault damage zone in the 3D volume of fault. Fault damage zone
is described as a deformation area bounding the fault core (modified after Schueller, Sylvie, et al.,
2013)

Figure 2 - The 3D seismic surveys location of Indian field in the Exmouth Sub-basin, northwestern Australia
(McArdle, N. J., et al., 2014). The yellow square at Indian showing the location of the study area
which is a subset of a full 3D volume scales ~12.5 x 3.8 km wide
Figure 3 - Regional stratigraphy of the Northern Carnarvon Basin (right) with the estimated formation of the study area in seismic section marked by black dash
line (left; with 3x exaggeration). Data courtesy of Geoscience Australia
Figure 4 -The schematic picture of Voxel in the data. The seismic data is composed by a number of rectangle
voxel cube which scales 14mx12.5mx4ms in x, y, z direction.
Figure 5 - Random noise cancellation is applied with iteration of 10. The filtered seismic data becomes clearer than original data (left). The change of amplitude
spectrum before and after filtering. It removed a bit of high frequency but retained the bandwidth of data (right).
Figure 6 - The filtered data have a broader bandwidth than the original one (shown by the plots [right]). In
consequence, some subtle features appear more clearly after the enhancement.
Figure 7 - The attributes help to enhance fault features in seismic data. The 3 attributes give a strong response to fault features (black). Fault features in Tensor
and SO Semblance look clearer than DIP. Combination the 3 attributes is using CMY blending and give a better fault delineation.
Figure 8 - There are two types of seeding voxel. The seeding voxel on time slice is ilustrated by blue line and yellow
line describes the seeding voxel on the horizontal slice

Figure 9 - FDZ width is obtained after converting the geobody into thickness using thickness attribute. In one
fault throw commonly, there are several widths. The width is measured horizontally.
Figure 10 - Geobody seems to grow excessively and away from the fault producing a less sensible shape. It
is caused by the geobody limitation to capture.