Abstract
Proper correlations between formation mechanical properties and acoustic data is essential for field rock mechanical analysis, and it has thereby a great significance to field operations such as hydraulic fracturing, wellbore stability during drilling, sand production risk evaluation, compaction studies, etc. This paper presents results from a correlation study between formation mechanical properties and acoustic wave velocities from wells in the North Sea. Correlations between formation compressive strength, elastic stiffness and Poisson’s number and compressional and shear transit times have been established. The data for this study was collected from triaxial compression tests performed on core plugs at various confining pressures. The results confirm that the stress level and stress configuration affects the acoustic velocities, and this should be accounted for when using generalized empirical correlations to estimate formation strength from acoustic logs in field studies. The results are found to match reasonably well with other published relations.
