Seismic dispersion and attenuation in saturated porous rocks with aligned fractures of finite thickness: Theory and numerical simulations - part 2: Frequency-dependent anisotropy

ABSTRACTNumerous theoretical models have been proposed for computing seismic wave dispersion and attenuation in rocks with aligned fractures due to wave-induced fluid flow between the fractures and the embedding background. However, all these models rely on certain assumptions, for example, infinitesimal fracture thickness or dilute fracture concentration, which rarely hold in real reservoirs and, thus, limit their applicability. To alleviate this issue, theoretical models for periodically or randomly spaced planar fractures and penny-shaped cracks were recently extended by the authors to the case of finite fracture thickness for P-waves propagating perpendicular to the fracture plane. Theoretical predictions under low and relatively high fracture density were then assessed by comparing with corresponding numerical simulations. However, the case of arbitrary incidence angles as well as the behaviors of S-waves remained unexplored. In this work, we therefore extended the prediction results to the full stif...