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Physical modeling, using ultrasonic sources and receivers over scaled exploration structures, plays a useful role in wave propagation and elastic property investigations. This paper explores the anisotropic response of novel fractured glass blocks created with a laser-etching technique. We compare transmitted and reflected signals for P-and Swaves from fractured and unfractured zones in a suite of ultrasonic experiments. The unaltered glass velocities are 5801 m/s and 3448 m/s for P and S waves, respectively, with fractured zones showing a small decrease (about 1%). Signals propagating through the fractured zone have decreased amplitudes and increased coda signatures. Reflection surveys (zero-offset and variable polarization and offset gathers) record significant scatter from the fractured zones. The glass specimens with laser-etched fractures display a rich anisotropic response.

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Elastic‐wave propagation in fractured and cracked media depends on the dominant spatial orientation of the discontinuities. Consequently, compressional and shear‐wave velocities can give valuable information about the orientation of the cracks. The main goal of this work is to estimate the preferential fracture orientation based on an analysis of cross‐correlated S‐wave seismograms and Thomsen parameters. For this purpose, we analyzed ultrasonic measurements of elastic (P and S) waves in a physical‐modeling experiment with an artificially anisotropic cracked model. The solid matrix of the model consisted of epoxy‐resin; small rubber strips simulate cracks with a compliant fill. The anisotropic cracked model consists of three regions, each with a different fracture orientation. We used the rotation of the S‐wave polarizations for a cross‐correlation analysis of the orientations, and P‐ and S‐wave measurements to evaluate the weak anisotropic parametersγ and ε.The shear and compressional wave sources had dominant frequencies of 90 kHz and 120 kHz. These frequencies correspond to long wavelengths compared to the spacing between layers, indicating a nearly effective‐media behavior. Integrating the results from cross‐correlation with anisotropic parameter analysis, we were able to estimate the fracture orientation in our anisotropic cracked physical model. Theγparameter showed good agreement with the cross‐correlation analysis and, beyond that, provided additional information about the crack orientation that cross‐correlation alone did not fully resolve. Moreover, our results show that the shear waves are much more strongly influenced by, and can thus contain more information about, crack orientation than compressional waves.

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A B S T R A C THydrocarbon reservoirs are generally located beneath complex geological structures. Frequently, such areas contain seismic diffractors that carry detailed structure information in the order of the seismic wavelength. Therefore, the development of computational facilities capable of detecting diffractor points with a good resolution is desirable but has been a challenge in the area of seismic processing. In this work, we present a method for the detection of diffraction points in the common-offsetgather domain. The method applies a two-class k nearest neighbours (kNN) pattern recognition technique to amplitudes along diffraction traveltime curves to distinguish between diffractions and reflections or noise. While the method, in principle, requires knowledge of the migration velocity field, it is very robust with respect to an erroneous model. Numerical examples using synthetic seismic and field groundpenetrating-radar (GPR) data demonstrate the feasibility of the technique and show its usefulness for automatically mapping diffraction points in a seismic section. In our applications, the method was able to detect all diffractions present in the data and did not produce any false positives.