QVOA Techniques for Estimation of Fracture Directions

Some new computational techniques are suggested for estimating symmetry axis azimuth of fractures in the viscoelastic anisotropic target layer in the framework of QVOA analysis (Quality factor Versus Offset and Azimuth). The different QVOA techniques are compared using synthetic viscoelastic surface reflected data with and without noise. I calculated errors for these techniques which depend on different sets of azimuths and intervals of offsets. Superiority of the high-order “enhanced general” and “cubic” techniques is shown. The high-quality QVOA techniques are compared with one of the high-quality AVOA techniques (Amplitude Versus Offset and Azimuth) in the synthetic data with noise and attenuation. Results are comparable.