The limits of narrow and wide-angle AVA inversions for high Vp/Vs ratios: An application to elastic seabed characterization

Since its introduction in the oil and gas industry, amplitude versus angle (AVA) inversion has become a standard tool in deep hydrocarbon exploration. However, with the intensification of offshore construction activity, applications of this method have been extended to evaluate the elastic properties of seabed sediments and of the shallowest part of the subsurface. These regions are often characterized by undercompacted sediments with very low S-wave velocities (Vs) and high P-wave velocity to S-wave velocity (Vp/Vs) ratios. However, the importance of the Vp/Vs ratio is usually underrated in AVA inversion. In this study, we analyse the limits of the AVA method in cases of high Vp/Vs ratios and the benefits introduced by wide-angle reflections in constraining the inversion results. A simplified seabed model that is characterized by a high Vp/Vs ratio is used to study the influence of the elastic and viscoelastic parameters on the P-wave reflection coefficients and to compute the error function of the AVA inversion. In addition, a synthetic AVA inversion is performed on this simplified model, which enables us to apply the sensitivity analysis tools to the inversion kernel. These theoretical analyses show that in the case of high Vp/Vs ratios, the Vs contrast at the reflecting interface plays a very minor role in determining the P-wave reflection coefficients and that the viscoelastic effects can be neglected when only pre-critical angles are considered in the inversion. In addition, wide-angle reflections are essential to reducing both the cross-talk between the inverted elastic parameters and the uncertainties in the Vp and density estimations, but they are not sufficient to better constrain the Vs estimation. As an application to field data, we derive the elastic properties of the seabed interface by applying AVA inversion to a 2D seismic dataset from a well-site survey acquisition. The limited water depth, the maximum available source-to-receiver offset, and the high frequency content of the data allow two different ranges of incidence angles to be considered: 0-30° and 0-60°. The results of the field data inversion confirm the conclusions from the theoretical analysis.