On low frequencies emitted by air guns at very shallow depths — An experimental study

Abstract

In marine seismic acquisition, the enhancement of frequency amplitudes below 5 Hz is of special interest because it improves imaging of the subsurface. The frequency content of the air gun, the most commonly used marine seismic source, is mainly controlled by its depth and the volume. Although the depth dependency on frequencies greater than 5 Hz has been thoroughly investigated, for frequencies less than 5 Hz it is less understood. However, recent results suggest that sources fired very close to the sea surface might enhance these very low frequencies. Therefore, we conduct dedicated tank experiments to investigate the changes of the source signal for very shallow sources in more detail. A small-volume air gun is fired at different distances from the water-air interface, including depths for which the air bubble bursts directly into the surrounding air. The variations of the oscillating bubble and surface disturbances, which can cause changes of the reflected signal from the sea surface, are explored to determine whether an increased frequency signal below 5 Hz can be achieved from very shallow air guns. The results are compared with field measurements of a large-volume air gun fired close to the sea surface. The results reveal an increased signal for frequencies below 5 Hz of up to 10 and 20 dB for the tank and field experiments, respectively, for the source depth at which the air gun bubble bursts directly into the surrounding air. For large-volume air guns, an increased low-frequency signal might also be achieved for sources that are slightly deeper than this bursting depth. From these observations, new design considerations in the geometry of air-gun arrays in marine seismic acquisition are suggested.

Acoustic signals in air and water generated by very shallow marine seismic sources: An experimental study

“…How strong the signals are that are transmitted into the air, and reflected back into the water, respectively, is of interest in marine seismic applications. Here, the sources are close to the water-air interface and the signal that is reflected back into the water has a major impact on the measured data (Amundsen et al, 2017;Landrø and Amundsen, 2014;Wehner et al, 2019).…”

Multi-Task Learning for Low-Frequency Extrapolation and Elastic Model Building From Seismic Data

“…Limits of acquirable frequencies: Acquiring low-frequency data is a costly venture because it requires low-frequency sources [25] and sensitive receivers [26]. Nevertheless, stateof-the-art seismic marine surveys allow recording such data in the field.…”

Ice-Water-Gas Interaction during Icebreaking by an Airgun Bubble

“…When the bubble achieves the maximum, the moving velocity of the According to energy conservation before shot and maximum bubble volume after shot, one can derive a simplified relation between d max and P 0 . Just before the shot, there is potential energy, E p , conserved in the bubble [34][35][36] as…”

“…where V 0 is the volume of the air gun, P 0 is working pressure, and c 1 is a coefficient for the design of the gun. When the bubble achieves the maximum, the moving velocity of the bubble at that moment is zero, so the kinetic energy is zero and the potential energy [34][35][36] can be written as…”