BOREHOLE EFFECTS ON DOWNHOLE SEISMIC MEASUREMENTS

An exact formulation for borehole coupling, which is valid for all frequencies and all azimuthally symmetric and non-symmetric components, is presented. The borehole effects on downhole seismic measurements are studied in detail as functions of frequency, angle of incidence and polarization of an incident wave as well as geophone orientation. We found that correction for the borehole effect on downhole measurements should be made for frequencies above 500 Hz in a hard formation. In a soft formation, if the angle of incidence is well away from the resonance angle for SV incidence, no borehole correction is needed for frequencies below 300 Hz, while for frequencies above 300 Hz, the borehole can cause severe problems in downhole measurements. The borehole can also significantly alter the particle motion direction which implies that horizontal component rotation from data itself is unreliable for experiments with frequencies above 1 kHz in the hard formation and around 500 Hz in the soft formation.