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A direct method of calculating interval velocities and layer thicknesses from wide-angle seismic reflection times

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Abstract

Wide-angle reflections are now routinely recorded in high resolution explosion seismics to study the crustal structure. Use of Dix's hyperbolic approximation to the nonhyperbolic wide-angle reflection travel times causes major errors in the determination of interval velocities and layer thicknesses of a stack of horizontal velocity layers. Here we propose a layer stripping method to directly calculate the interval velocities and layer thicknesses in a vertically heterogeneous earth from the strong and reliable wide-angle reflected events. Synthetic reflection travel times, at wide-angle range, for a given velocity model, contaminated by some random errors, have been used to demonstrate the reliability of the algorithms to determine the interval velocities and thicknesses of various layers. The method has also been tested on two field examples along two deep seismic sounding (DSS) profiles with well identified wide-angle reflection travel times, which illustrates the practical feasibility of the proposed method.

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Sain, K., Kaila, K.L. A direct method of calculating interval velocities and layer thicknesses from wide-angle seismic reflection times. PAGEOPH 146, 343–363 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00876497

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00876497

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