• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.241-249
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• 2006

Due to the long tectonic history and the very complex geologic formations in Korea, the anisotropic characteristics of subsurface material may often change very greatly and locally. The algorithms commonly used, however, may not give sufficiently precise computational results of traveltime data particularly for the complex and strong anisotropic model, since they are based on the two-dimensional (2D) earth and/or weak anisotropy assumptions. This study is intended to develope a three-dimensional (3D) modeling algorithm to precisely calculate the first arrival time in the complex anisotropic media. Considering the complex geology of Korea, we assume 3D TTI (tilted transversely isotropy) medium having the arbitrary symmetry axis. The algorithm includes the 2D non-linear interpolation scheme to calculate the traveltimes inside the grid and the 3D traveltime mapping to fill the 3D model with first arrival times. The weak anisotropy assumption, moreover, can be overcome through devising a numerical approach of the steepest descent method in the calculation of minimum traveltime, instead of using approximate solution. The performance of the algorithm developed in this study is demonstrated by the comparison of the analytic and numerical solutions for the homogeneous anisotropic earth as well as through the numerical experiment for the two layer model whose anisotropic properties are greatly different each other. We expect that the developed modeling algorithm can be used in the development of processing and inversion schemes of seismic data acquired in strongly anisotropic environment, such as migration, velocity analysis, cross-well tomography and so on.

• Current Research on Agriculture and Life Sciences
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• v.5
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• pp.158-167
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• 1987

The purpose of this study is to inquire and analyse the relation between traveltime (Tc) and watetshed physical characteristics surveyed such as river length (L), Lea, river main slope (s), base length of time area diagram, and storage constant (k). The results obtained in this study are as follows. The average widths of watersheds were with the range from 4.6 kilometers to 16.7 kilometers. The shape factors of main stream ranged from 0.08 to 0.37. The average slopes to main 8tream were within the range of 1.7-5.5 meter per kilometer. The relation between the base length and traveltime from S. C. S. method, Rational method, and RZIHA+KRAVEN method were derived $Tc=0.524{\times}1.35^c$ (r=0.98), $Tc=0.628{\times}1.339^c$, (r=0.98), $Tc=0.667{\times}1.342^c$ (r=0.97). The base length of the time-area diagram (c) for the IUH was derived as $c=0.9(\frac{L.L_{ca}}{\sqrt{s}})^{0.35}$ and correlation coefficient was 0.98 which defined a high significance. The storage constant K, derived in this study was $K=8.32+0.0213{\frac{L}{\sqrt{s}}}$ with correlation coefficient (0.96). The relation between storage Constant and conventional formula were figured out $Tc=0.0003{\times}3.323^k$ (r=0.97). $Tc=0.00045{\times}3.268^k$ (r=0.99) and $Tc=0.0004{\times}3.26^k$ (r=0.963). The base length (c) and storage constant (k) of time-Area Diagram were very important parts that determined traveltime for flood events. In the estimate of travel time for predicting flood volume, the formula of $Tc=0.524{\times}1.35^c$ that would be available to apply the Nak - Dong river watershed area and homogeneous watershed characteristics was found.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.138-142
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• 2003

Crosswell seismic data were acquired in three sections crossing a tunnel of 3 different types; one was empty, another was ailed by sand, and the other was filled by rock debris. Both the P- and S-wave first arrivals were picked and the traveltime tomography was conducted to generate the P- and S- wave velocity tomograms on the all three sections. Among six tomograms, only one tomogram shows a low velocity zone that can be interpreted as a tunnel image. The tomogram is the P wave velocity image of a section that crosses an empty tunnel. The result of numerical analysis for the spatial resolution of the traveltime tomography was consistent to this finding.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.263-271
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• 2008

3D seismic tomography technique was assessed for applicability of developed 3D tomography algorithm based on Fresnel volume in the dam-planned area. Reconstructed 3D tomogram based on Fresnel volume and Fast Marching Method(FMM) reveals similar velocity structure to the other geotechnical survey results. With the correlation analysis between RMR data and seismic velocity information, it could provide reliable information of rock mass rate. The applicability of 3D seismic tomography was verified in this study. It would be expected to apply 3D tomography with new developed first arrival calculation and inversion algorithm to the engineering field economically.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.163-175
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• 2017

In land seismic exploration, irregular surface topography and weathering layer in near surface distorts the reflected signals of data. Therefore, typical land seismic data should be compensated for this distortion by static correction. To perform the static correction, near-surface velocity is required, which can be obtained by seismic refraction survey. However, land seismic data is often acquired in a limited form of geometry depending on the equipment availability, accessibility condition, and permission for the survey site. In this situation, refraction analysis should be performed using reflection data because it is impossible to acquire refraction-oriented data due to limited source and receiver geometry. In this study, we aimed to analyze the reliability of the results obtained by refraction traveltime tomography when using reflection data with a limited number of sources and receivers from irregular surface topography. By comparing the inversion result from irregular topography with that from flat surface, we found that the surface topography affects the reliability of the inversion results to some degree. We also found that the number of sources has little effect on the inversion results unless the number of sources are very small. On the other hand, we observed that velocity distortion occurred in the overlapped part of receiver arrays when using a limited number of receivers, and therefore suggested the size of the least overlapping ratio to avoid the velocity distortion. Finally, we performed numerical tests for the model which simulates the surface topography and acquisition geometry of the survey region and verified the reliability analysis of inversion results. We identified reliable areas and suspicious area of the inverted velocity model by applying the analysis results to field data.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.105-113
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• 2009

The interpretation of observed waveform characteristics identified in refraction and wide-angle reflection data increases confidence in the crustal structure model obtained. When calculating traveltimes and raypaths, wavefront methods on a regular grid based on graph theory are robust even with complicated structures, but basically compute only first arrivals. In this paper, we develop new algorithms to compute traveltimes and raypaths not only for first arrivals, but also for fast and later reflection arrivals, later refraction arrivals, and converted waves between P and S, using the modified wavefront method based on slowness network nodes mapped on a multi-layer model. Using the new algorithm, we can interpret reflected arrivals, Pg-later arrivals, strong arrivals appearing behind Pn, triplicated Moho reflected arrivals (PmP) to obtain the shape of the Moho, and phases involving conversion between P and S. Using two models of an ocean-continent transition zone and an oceanic ridge or seamount, we show the usefulness of this algorithm, which is confirmed by synthetic seismograms using the 2D Finite Difference Method (2D-FDM). Characteristics of arrivals and raypaths of the two models differ from each other in that using only first-arrival traveltime data for crustal structure analysis involves risk of erroneous interpretation in the ocean-continent transition zone, or the region around a ridge or seamount.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.140-145
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• 2011

In order to analyze the influence of the noise on a cross-well traveltime tomography to detect a small scale low velocity body in a homogeneous medium, the first arrival travel times were computed one a tunnel model by a finite-difference ray tracing scheme. Three different types and four different intensity levels of white noises were added to the computed first arrival travel times, and velocity tomograms were constructed using an iterative inversion method (SIRT). Tomograms with the noise intensity up to 10% of the maximum traveltime delay in the tunnel model, showed the exact location of the tunnel. However, the velocity shown at the tunnel location was not close to air velocity but only slightly less than the velocity of the background medium. The additive random noise showed significantly less degree of influence on the resulting tomogram than the source- and receiver consistent noise.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.201-207
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• 1994

This paper presents a technique to determine anisotropic elastic coefficients from traveltimes of seismic reflections or vertical seismic profiling (VSP) in tranversely isotropic layers whose thicknesses are known. The elastic coefficients are calculated from three different velocities (vertical, horizontal and skew velocities) which are determined from skew hyperbolic traveltimes by least-square fitting or semblance analysis. This interpretation technique is tested for synthetic traveltime data obtained for transversely isotropic models. The test shows that the anisotropic elastic constants of the models are determined accurately by this interpretation method.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.239-244
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• 1996

Cracks have influence on the physical and mechanical and, more importantly, on the engineering properties of the rock. Physical properties including the volumetric deformation coefficient, electrical resistivity, seismic wave velocity, and the mechanical properties such as the elastic constants and strength of rock are affected significantly by the presence of cracks of various sizes. An experimental program was undertaken to investigate the effect of a finite line crack on the diffraction of the plane compressional wave. Horizontal and vertical components of displacement and acceleration curve were obtained using a single-source and multi-receivers system. A theoretical model from numerical analysis implementing the finite element method was compared with the measured data.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.173-182
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• 2009

In April 2008, KIGAM carried out an ocean-bottom seismometer (OBS) survey in the central Ulleung Basin where strong bottom simulating reflectors (BSRs) were revealed from previous surveys and some gas-hydrate samples were retrieved by direct sampling. The purpose of this survey is to estimate the velocity structure near the BSR in the gas hydrate prospect area using wide-angle seismic data recorded on the ocean-bottom seismometers. Along with the OBS survey, a 2-D seismic survey was performed whereby stratigraphic and preliminary velocity information was obtained. Two methods were applied to wide-angle data for estimating P wave velocity; one is velocity analysis in the $\tau$-p domain and the other is seismic traveltime inversion. A 1-D interval velocity profile was obtained by the first method, which was refined to layered velocity structure by the latter method. A layer stripping method was adopted for modeling and inversion. All velocity profiles at each OBS site clearly show velocity reversal at BSR depths due to the presence of gas hydrates. In addition, we could confirm high velocity in the column/chimney structure.