Stress anisotropy and velocity anisotropy in low porosity shale

Shales are known for often marked intrinsic anisotropy of many of their properties, including strength, permeability and velocity for example. In addition, it is well known that anisotropic stress fields can also have a significant impact on anisotropy of velocity, even in an isotropic medium. This paper sets out to investigate the ultrasonic velocity response of well-characterised low porosity shales from the Officer Basin in Western Australia to both isotropic and anisotropic stress fields and to evaluate the velocity response to the changing stress field. During consolidated undrained multi-stage triaxial tests on core plugs cut normal to bedding, Vpv increases monotonically with increasing effective stress and Vs1 behaves similarly although with some scatter. Vph and Vsh remain constant initially but then decrease within each stage of the multi-stage test, although velocity from stage to stage at any given differential stress increases. This has the impact of decreasing both P-wave (ε) and S-wave anisotropy (γ) through application of differential stress within each loading stage. However, increasing the magnitude of an isotropic stress field has little effect on the velocity anisotropies. The intrinsic anisotropy of the shale remains reasonably high at the highest confining pressures. The results indicate the magnitude and orientation of the stress anisotropy with respect to the shale microfabric has a significant impact on the velocity response to changing stress fields.

Research highlights
► Rock physics results on preserved shale cores.
► Impact of stress and microfabric on velocity in shales.
► Fabric orientation with respect to maximum principal stress governs velocity anisotropy.