Seismoelectric wave propagation modeling for typical laboratory configurations: A numerical validation

The seismoelectric effect can be of importance for hydrocarbon exploration as it is complementary to conventional seismics. Besides enabling seismic resolution and electromagnetic sensitivity at the same time, the seismoelectric method can also provide us with additional, high-value information like porosity and permeability. However, very little is still understood of this complex physical phenomenon. Therefore, it is crucial to be able to perform numerical modeling experiments to carefully investigate the effect and the parameters that play a role. Over the last couple of years, several seismoelectric laboratory experiments have been carried out in an attempt to validate the underlying theory of the phenomenon and to better understand this complex physical phenomenon. We have recently extended our analytically based, numerical seismoelectric modeling code ’ESSEMOD’ to be able to model seismoelectric wave propagation in arbitrarily layered Earth geometries with fluid / porous medium / (fluid) interfaces. In this way, we are capable of effectively simulating full seismoelectric wave propagation, i. e. all existing seismoelectric and electroseismic source-receiver combinations, in typical laboratory configurations. We present the underlying theory that is required for the extension towards arbitrary fluid / porous medium / (fluid) geometries and an effective way to incorporate this in a general seismoelectric layered Earth modeling code. We then validate the underlying global reflection scheme by comparing it with an independently developed layered Earth modeling code for purely electromagnetic fields. The results show a perfect match in both amplitude and phase, indicating that ESSEMOD is correctly modeling the electromagnetic parts of the seismo-electric wave propagation in horizontally layered media with fluid / porous medium / fluid transitions. We finalize with a seismoelectric reciprocal modeling experiment, proving that also the full seismoelectric wave propagation through fluid / porous medium transitions is modeled consistently.