What

Are Seismic
Waves?
Seismic waves are the waves of energy caused by the sudden
breaking of rock within the earth or by any explosion. They are
the energy that travels through the earth and is recorded on
seismographs.

Types of Seismic Waves

There are several different kinds of seismic waves, and they all
move in different ways. The two main types of waves are Body
waves and Surface waves.
1. Body waves can travel through the earth's inner layers, but
surface waves can only move along the surface of the planet like
ripples on water.

2. Earthquakes radiate seismic energy as both body and surface

waves.

BODY WAVES
These wave Travel through the interior of the earth
Body waves arrive before the surface waves emitted
by an earthquake.
These waves are of a higher frequency than surface
waves.
As their frequency is high their energy is more
Body wave are of two type

P wave
a.

The first kind of body wave is the P wave or

primary wave. This is the fastest kind of seismic
wave, and, consequently, the first to 'arrive' at a
seismic station.

b. The P wave can move through solid rock and

fluids, like water or the liquid layers of the earth. It
pushes and pulls the rock it moves through just
like sound waves push and pull the air.

c.

d. P waves are also known as compressional waves,

because of the pushing and pulling they do.
Subjected to a P wave, particles move in the same
direction that the the wave is moving in, which is
the direction that the energy is traveling in
S waves
1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.The second type of body wave is the S
wave or secondary wave, which is the second wave
we feel in an earthquake.
1.1.1.1.1.1.1.2.

An S wave is slower than a P wave and

can only move through solid rock, not through

any liquid medium.

It is this property of S waves that
led seismologists to conclude that the Earth's
outer core is a liquid. S waves move rock
particles up and down, or side-to-side-perpindicular to the direction that the wave is
traveling in (the direction of wave
propagation).

1.1.1.1.1.1.1.3.

SURFACE WAVE
Travelling only through the crust
surface waves are of a lower frequency than body waves,
and are easily distinguished on a seismogram
They arrive after body waves

It is surface waves that are almost enitrely

responsible for the damage and destruction
associated with earthquakes

surface wave are of two types

LOVE WAVES
a. love waves are found by A.E.H. Love, a British
mathematician who worked out the
mathematical model for this kind of wave in
1911

b. It's the fastest surface wave and moves the

ground from side-to-side
c. Love waves produce entirely horizontal motion
RAYLEIGH WAVES
d. The other kind of surface wave is the Rayleigh wave
these waves are found by Lord Rayleigh, who
mathematically predicted the existence of this kind
of wave in 1885
e. A Rayleigh wave rolls along the ground just like a
wave rolls across a lake or an ocean
f. Because it rolls, it moves the ground up and down,
and side-to-side in the same direction that the wave
is moving
g. Most of the shaking felt from an earthquake is
due to the Rayleigh wave, which can be much
larger than the other waves

seismic reflection methord

This is a methord used to explore earth interior crust with
the help of artificial generated waves
It produce the ultrasound image of earth crust
These methord are used by petroleum industry to explores
hydrocarbon-trapped in sedimentary basins.

 These methord use principle of elastic wave which travels

with different speed in different layer of earth crust.
Generally P waves are used for onshore seismic
Seismic methords are done in sea as well as on earth surface
Seismic refraction methods are less commonly used in
energy exploration
these methords are commonly used for earthquake
investigations, tsunami detection and warning systems and
for monitoring nuclear explosions

Types of seismic reflection methord

Seismic reflection results provide high-resolution, highdetail structural images of the subsurface of the Earth's
crust
There are two type of seismic methord
onshore seismic (land)
offshore seismic (sea)

1. Onshore seismic reflection mehord

in onshore methord seismic waves are produced with the

help of Vibroseis trucks these waves are similar to sound
wave.

 The waves produced by these trucks are allowed to travel inside earth
which are reflected back with the diffrent layers of deep earth and are also
reflected back from oil surfaces trapped inside earth
the reflected waves are recieve (recorded)by an array of geophones,
which are similar to sensitive microphones

 the signals recorded by geophones are later processed to produce an

image of the subsurface geology

2. Offshore seismic reflection methord

 In offshore seismic waves is generated by an acoustic airblast

released below the sea surface
The difference between offshore and onshore is that in
offshore hydrophones are used to recieve reflected waves.

Seismic processing

when we record the seismic waves through gophones the

waves produce by noise is also collected by geophones.

To correct the problem of noise and other factors we need

seismic processing.

 Processed seismic data can contribute to hydrocarbon

exploration in several ways:

Seismic data can give direct evidence of the presence of

hydrocarbons (e.g. bright spots, oil-water contact, amplitudeversus-offset anomalies).

Potential hydrocarbon traps can be imaged (e.g. reefs,

unconformities, structural traps, stratiagraphic traps etc)

Regional structure can be understood in terms of

depositional history and the timing of regression and
transgression (seismic stratigraphy, seismic facies analysis).
This can sometimes give an understanding of where
potential source rocks are located and the relative age of
reservoir rocks.

Potential source rock are the rocks which contains

organic matter in sufficient quantity to generate and expel
hydrocarbons

Through processing, the huge volumes of data taken in the

field are reduced to simple images for display on paper or
the work station screen. This simple image, while it contains
less data about the subsurface, is readily accessible to the
interpreter and has many of the artifacts and errors just
listed removed

The Raw-seismic data before processing is look like above

sismic data after processing is look like below

The

 Typic
al

processing steps :

1.

demultiplex : The name given to sorting the traces

from time ordered storage (all receiver stations at a
given time) to receiver ordered format (all times for a
given receiver) or trace sequential format

2.

Editing : The process of flagging traces or pieces of

traces to be ignored for one reason or another.

3.

Geometry : The association by unique identifier of

each recorded trace with shot and receiver locations.

4.

Antialias filter : A low pass filter applied before

resampling the data to a coarser time scale to prevent
aliasing. Aliasing is a phenomenon in which high
frequency data masquerades as low frequency
energy as a result of undersampling. To sample a
signal properly, there must be at least two samples
within the shortest period of interest. Antialias filters
remove frequencies above the sampling limit (Nyquist
frequency) of the new sampling time. The operation is
performed before the sampling is reduced.
Gain recovery :
The correction for
the loss in
amplitude of a
signal as it travels
through the earth
and spreads its
energy over a
larger surface area.
This involves
multiplication of
the signal by a
number that increases with time. The exact time
variant multiplier can be based on the theoretical
concept of spherical spreading (related to the square of
the distance traveled), can be based on measurements
of amplitude decay with time made on the data itself,
or can be entirely arbitrary.
5.

6. Deconvolution :
The removal of the
frequency-dependent
response of the source
and the instrument.
The instrument
response is normally
known and can be
removed exactly. The
source shape is not
usually known but can
be measured directly
(marine air gun
signatures) or
estimated from the
signal itself under certain assumptions. Signature
deconvolution, wavelet deconvolution, spiking
deconvolution, gapped deconvolution, predictive
deconvolution, maximum entropy deconvolution, and
surface consistent deconvolution are various manifestations
of the attempt to remove the source width from the
observed reflections. The resulting reflection sequence
always has some smoothing function left, usually called
the residual wavelet. Attempting to be too exact about
deconvolution usually results in a very noisy section. The
effect of deconvolution is seen below

7.

Statics : The removal of traveltime artifacts relating to the

placement of the source and receiver at or near the earth's
surface. Differences in traveltime to the same reflector which
result from elevation differences and near-surface velocity
changes at different source and receiver stations must be
removed. The relative elevation of each shot and receiver
location and the near surface velocity must be known to
make these corrections. An elevation datum is chosen, and
the distance above or below that datum is measured for
each source and receiver. The difficulty is in knowing what
velocity to use to convert this elevation difference to a time
correction to be added to or subtracted from the entire trace
(hence the term statics). Refraction statics, surface
consistent statics, and residual statics are all techniques
used to estimate and apply the appropriate velocity and time
corrections

8. Demultiple : Strong reflections can act as a secondary

source of seismic energy that will interfere with the primary
reflections and confuse the interpretation. Such secondary
reflections are called multiples. The most common are water
bottom multiples, but interbed multiples also exist. The
demultiple process attempts to remove these

9. fk or apparent velocity
filter : Acoustic signals that are not
reflections from subsurface layers
appear in shot records (figure
below) as straight lines rather than
hyperbolic curves. These events
have a constant apparent velocity
as they travel along the receiver
cable. This simple organization
allows them to be isolated from the
reflection signal and to be removed
from the record. A common way to
do this is with the FK (sometimes called pie slice) filter.
Judicious selection of the range of apparent velocities to be
removed can eliminate linear noise. Too wide a filter can
remove too much information from the section and causes
serious interpretation problems.

10. Normal moveout (NMO) correction : The reflection

from a given horizon does not arrive at the same time at
different receivers along the length of the seismic cable or
spread . However, if the velocity at which the sound traveled
is known, the arrival time difference (moveout) at each
station can be predicted. Conversely, knowing the arrival
time difference, the velocity the sound traveled can be
determined under certain model assumptions. Usually the
velocity of the earth as a function of time is determined at a
few locations over the survey. This model can then be used
to calculate moveout as a function of time everywhere in the
survey. The moveout is subtracted from each seismic record

such that the reflections from a given horizon will appear

flat. This facilitates identification of reflectors and stacking.

11. Dip

moveout (DMO) correction : NMO corrections are

made under the assumption of horizontal planar reflectors. If
the reflector has appreciable dip, then the actual movement
will be slightly different. The DMO correction is a method for
estimating the effect of dip on moveout and removing it from
the records as well.

12.

Common midpoint (CMP) stack

This is the single most effective step for noise reduction in the
processing flow. The shooting procedure results in many traces
being acquired with the point midway
between source andreceiver (called the midpoint) being
coincident on the earths surface. The only difference between the
traces is the distance between source and receiver (offset). Once
these traces have been NMO (and DMO) corrected, they are really
redundant samples of the same reflection. Adding them together
increases the signal to random noise ratio by the square root of
the number of redundant samples. The process reduces the field
data to a stacked section consisting of one trace for each
midpoint location, assumed to have been recorded with a shot
and receiver coincident at the midpoint location
13. Poststack filter
Usually a band pass filter, this process excludes frequencies
above a certain value (high cut) and below a lower value (low cut)
to retain that part of the signal with the highest signal to noise
ratio. The values are usually set by trial and error and judged by a
visual comparison of sections. The values may be different for
different time gates of the section. Typically, the deeper
reflections (later time) have less signal at high frequencies
because these frequencies are absorbed or scattered more readily
in the earth. Consequently, a lower value for the high cut
frequency must be used as the bandpass is applied to later times
on the trace.
14. Poststack mix
This is a simple procedure that averages together adjacent traces
to enhance the signal to noise ratio. It causes a concurrent loss in
horizontal resolution.
Migration, display and other advanced processing techniques are
available and essential to the complete utilization of the seismic
data.
Now lot of us may not be able to understand each and every
steps include