Televiewer Rock Strength as an Approach to Estimate the Strength of in situ Rocks

텔레뷰어 암석강도 산출 및 그의 응용성

Televiewer is a logging tool capable of scanning the borehole wall. The tool uses a rotating acoustic beam generator that acts as both a transmitter and receiver. The beams are sent toward the wall. The amplitude of a returning signal from the wall has nearly a linear relationship with the reflection coefficient R of the borehole wall, when the wall is smooth. As R depends only on rock impedance for fixed water impedance, the amplitude is directly associated with mass density and seismic velocity of rock. Meanwhile, the amplitude can be further reduced by wall roughness that may be caused by drilling procedures, differences in rock hardness, because the rough surface can easily scatter the acoustic energy and sometimes the hole becomes elongated in all directions according to the degree of weathering. In this sense, the amplitude is related to the hardness of rocks. For convenience of analysis, the measured amplitude image(2-D data(azimuth ${\times}$ depth)) is converted, with an appropriate algorithm, to the 1-D data(depth), where the amplitude image values along a predetermined fracture signature(sinusoid) are summed up and averaged. The resulting values are subsequently scaled simply by a scalar factor that is possibly consistent with a known strength. This scaled Televiewer reflectivity is named, as a matter of convenience,“Televiewer rock strength”. This paper shows, based on abundant representative case studies from about 8 years of Televiewer surveys, that Televiewer rock strength might be regarded, on a continuous basis with depth, as a quitely robust indicator of rock classification and in most cases as an approximate uniaxial strength that is comparable to the rebound value from Schmidt hammer test.