Shear waves in near surface 3D media–SH–wavefield separation, refraction time migration and tomography

When investigating topographically irregular layers in the near surface with shear waves, it is of particular importance to consider the 3D-nature of wave propagation. Depending on the layer geometry and on the spatial arrangement of source- and receiver-points significant lateral ray bending can occur causing side-swipe traveltime effects and complicated polarisation patterns. As an example we present a study where 3D-shear wave refraction measurements were applied in order to reconstruct the geometry of a silted ancient harbour basin at the archaeological site of Miletus (West Turkey). Seismic signals were generated with a three-component vector force and recorded with three-component geophones arranged in 2D-arrays of 1 m grid spacing. Since a correct identification of refracted S-wave arrivals is a precondition to traveltime interpretation we investigated a method to decompose these wavefields with respect to their polarisation and azimuth of propagation. Taking advantage of the 2D-geophone arrangement we applied the following processing approach: In case of general lateral heterogeneity a decomposition can be performed by applying the curl and divergence operations to the vector wavefields recorded in 2D-arrays. The separated tangential and normal components to the wavefront in a plane are finally enhanced by combining the different force components in order to eliminate the radiation characteristics of the source. The decomposed wavefield was then the basis for 3D-refractor imaging through a newly formulated map migration of the refracted traveltime field. This technique was developed to map coherent basement structure on the meter-scale. Supplemental tomographic inversion using the refractor topography model as input provided a plausible velocity model, exhibiting characteristic anomalies such as a prominent low velocity zone overlain by a high velocity layer in the refractor. The seismic velocity structure suggests that the harbour basin was locally filled with natural or anthropogenic debris on which an antique harbour wall could have been founded.