Elastic properties of rocks containing oriented systems of ellipsoidal inclusions

•We have calculated effective elastic moduli of a rock with ellipsoidal inclusions.•The presence of a movable fluid in the rock is described using the Gassmann relations.•The comparison with the experimental data confirms the correctness of the method.

In the present work the effective elastic moduli of a rock containing one or more systems of parallel inclusions of 3D-ellipsoidal shape were calculated. The calculations were performed for the conditions of constant strain and stress at infinity. The results were obtained for non-interacting inclusions (low concentration). The presence of movable fluid in the rock is described by the universal Gassmann relations for an anisotropic medium. The comparison of the results obtained with the experimental data has shown that it is possible to apply the proposed calculation technique for the determination of elastic moduli and acoustic waves' velocities in rocks, for example, for double-porosity carbonate formations.