ON THE SEISMIC RESPONSE OF FRACTURES AND INDUCED ANISOTROPY IN FLUID-SATURATED POROUS MEDIA

A planar fracture embedded in a fluid-saturated poroelastic - Biot - medium can be modeled either as a extremely thin, highly permeable and compliant porous layer or employing suitable boundary conditions. First we analyze the seismic response at a single fracture separating two poroelastic half spaces. Then the macroscale seismic response of an heterogeneous Biot medium containing a dense set of aligned fractures is determined using a Numerical Rock Physics approach. Finally, we illustrate the propagation of waves at the macroscale for the case of horizontal and vertical aligned fractures employing effective viscoleastic properties determined using our computational rock physics.