Dominant frequencies of marine sources
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Series | Geophysical References Series |
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Title | Problems in Exploration Seismology and their Solutions |
Author | Lloyd P. Geldart and Robert E. Sheriff |
Chapter | 7 |
Pages | 221 - 252 |
DOI | http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/1.9781560801733 |
ISBN | ISBN 9781560801153 |
Store | SEG Online Store |
Problem 7.8
The dominant period of a marine seismic source is often determined by the source depth; this is the case when the second half-cycle of the downgoing wave is reinforced
by the ghost reflection at the surface. Assuming that this is true for the source signatures in Figure 7.8a, determine their depths.
Background
For discussion of reinforcement depth in marine recording, see problem 3.5. The ghost is the wave reflected at the surface (or at the base of the LVL) with a reversal of phase (see problem 3.8).
When a gas at high pressure is suddenly generated by an underwater explosion or injected into the water by an air gun at sufficient depth that the gas does not quickly escape into the air, oscillation occurs as the gas expands until stopped by the water pressure, then contracts until the gas pressure becomes very high,

(ms) | (m) | |
---|---|---|
a) air gun | 22 | 8 |
b) air-gun array | 24 | 9 |
c) sleeve exploder | 26 | 10 |
d) Vaporchoc | 18 | 7 |
e) Maxipulse | 24 | 9 |
f) Flexichoc | 28 | 11 |
g) water gun | 22 | 8 |
h) sparker | 4 | 2 |
after which it expands again and the cycle is repeated. Each expansion is effectively a new activation of the source and so a new reflection sequence is generated. This phenomenon is called the bubble effect.
Air guns are described in problem 7.7, imploders, water guns, and sparkers in problem 7.4. Flexichoc, sleeve gun, Vaporchoc, and Maxipulse are devices (now obsolete) designed to diminish the bubble oscillation. Flexichoc used the explosion of a small charge at the center of a steel cage that attenuated the bubble, the sleeve gun utilized the explosion of a propane-oxygen mixture inside a flexible chamber with the gases vented to the surface, Vaporchoc injected superheated steam into the water, and Maxipulse recorded the bubble oscillation for later processing to remove the bubble effects.
Solution
The phase of a ghost is reversed by reflection at the surface, hence to reinforce the downgoing wavelet the ghost must return to the source at time , where is the period measured in Figure 7.8a. Therefore the depth of the source m, taking velocity in water m/s. The results are shown in Table 7.8a.
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Energy from an air-gun array | Effect of coil inductance on geophone equation |
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Characteristics of seismic events | Reflection field methods |
Also in this chapter
- Radiolocation errors because of velocity variations
- Effect of station angle on location errors
- Transit satellite navigation
- Effective penetration of profiler sources
- Directivity of linear sources
- Sosie method
- Energy from an air-gun array
- Dominant frequencies of marine sources
- Effect of coil inductance on geophone equation
- Streamer feathering due to cross-currents
- Filtering effect of geophones and amplifiers
- Filter effects on waveshape
- Effect of filtering on event picking
- Binary numbers