Aligned vertical fractures, HTI reservoir symmetry, and Thomsen seismic anisotropy parameters

The Sayers and Kachanov (1991) crack-influence parametersare shown to be directly related to Thomsen (1986) weak-anisotropyseismic parameters for fractured reservoirs when the crack density issmall enough. These results are then applied to seismic wave propagationin reservoirs having HTI symmetry due to aligned vertical fractures. Theapproach suggests a method of inverting for fracture density from wavespeed data.