Imaging of Small-Scale Heterogeneity and Absorption Using Adjoint
Envelope Tomography: Results from Laboratory Experiments
Abstract
To complement the information provided by deterministic seismic imaging
at length scales above a certain resolution limit we present the first
application of Adjoint Envelope Tomography (AET) to experimental data.
AET uses the full envelopes of seismic records including scattered coda
waves to obtain information about the distribution of absorption and
small-scale heterogeneity which provide complementary information about
the investigated medium. Being below the resolution limit this
small-scale structure cannot be resolved by conventional tomography but
still affects wave propagation by attenuating ballistic waves and
generating scattered waves. Using ultrasound data from embedded sensors
in a meter-sized concrete specimen we image the distribution of
absorption and heterogeneity expressed by the intrinsic quality factor
Q-1 and the fluctuation strength ε that characterizes
the strength of the heterogeneity. The forward problem is solved by
modelling the 2-D multiple nonisotropic scattering in an acoustic medium
with spatially variable heterogeneity and attenuation using the
Monte-Carlo method. Gradients for the model updates are obtained by
convolution with the back-propagated envelope misfit using the adjoint
formalism in analogy to full waveform inversion. We use a late coda time
window to invert for absorption and an earlier time window to infer the
distribution of heterogeneity. The results successfully locate an area
of salt concrete with increased scattering and concentric anomalies of
intrinsic attenuation. The resolution test shows that the recovered
anomalies constitute reasonable representations of internal structure of
the specimen.