About the Course

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SPWLA Distinguished Speaker Series. This course describes new modeling capabilities and processing workflows to output dipole shear anisotropy answers, such as the fast and slow dipole shear slownesses and azimuths from LWD sonic tools. A major objective is to model the coupling between the drill-collar and formation flexural modes that has been the root cause of measurement problems with LWD dipole in the past and invert either of these two modes for the formation dipole-shear slowness. A new dispersion extraction algorithm isolates and identifies both of these dispersive arrivals in the recorded wave train. This is followed by a model based inversion of either the drill-collar flexural or formation flexural dispersions to obtain the dipole shear slownesses either in a fast or slow formations. In addition a model independent workflow is presented specifically for fast formation cases that offers an alternate method to derive dipole shears when the data quality allows. The methods outlined offer robust and reliable dipole shear answers and open the door to formation anisotropy characterization in all formations with LWD.