Abstract

     For historic reasons, the academic community in China has not paid much attention to the oil industry, an industry which is essential to economic growth and an industry which employs the most advanced research and technology. We can now drill oil wells as deep as 12.5K meters (as compared to 8.8K meters, the height of the Everest). At this kind of depth, the immense pressure and heat present a challenging environment as well as an ideal playground for the scientists.

     In this lecture, I will give an introduction of key technologies in the petroleum industry. I will then talk about 'borehole sonic logging', a technology that uses acoustic waves to measure rock properties around borehole (i.e., oil-well). I will explain in detail some of our new results, which include (1) new expressions for cylindrical waves in TI solids, (2) cuspidal borehole modes, and (3) dual arrivals in sonic logging.

Biobibliography

    Dr. Canyun Wang is a Principal Scientist at Schlumberger-Doll Research. He is a theoretician of wave propagation, and an acoustic expert in the petroleum industry. As a theoretician, his major contributions are in the field of elastodynamics, including solving the classical Lamb’ problem, developing wave projection theory, and discovering cuspidal mode. The dynamic fundamental solutions for general anisotropy derived by him and Achenbach have been widely used by the BEM community.  In the petroleum industry, he is a recognized expert in sonic-logging and logging-while-drilling, both are technologies that employ waves and various inversion techniques.  He has successfully carried out many multimillion-dollar-projects of fundamental research as well as technology development.