The effects of bonding conditions on the propagation of acoustic waves along a cased borehole

Based on the wave equations in cylindrically layered structures and boundary conditions, the frequency equation for axisymmetric guided waves and the expression for sound fields in a cased borehole excited by a monopole or multipole source have been derived. The synthetic full waveforms excited by the monopole and dipole source are simulated using a real axis integration and FFT method. According to the axisymmetric guided wave modes, the synthetic full waveforms and the effects of the interface conditions on the sound field in a cased borehole have been analyzed and studied respectively. Numerical results indicate that it may be difficult to distinguish well bonded, poorly bonded or unbonded intermediate layer between the steel pipe and formation if only using a monopole source or dipole source. To properly estimate the case boundary conditions, a combination of monopole source logging with dipole source logging is suggested.

Estimation and Analysis of Structural Responses of Asphalt Pavement Using Interlayer Contact Bonding Model

The interlayer contact condition of asphalt pavement has a significant impact on stress transfer and energy dissipation with adjacent layers,so a model considering the bonding condition of adjacent layers is introduced for evaluating the structural response of asphalt pavement.The pavement structure,the material characterization with temperature,the interlayer contact bonding model,the types of bond failure,and the prediction method of pavement life are described in detail.Results show that the transversely tensile strains at the top of asphalt pavement under the condition of high temperature were easy to cause the top-down cracking outside the edge of the dual tire.The bonding failure has a significant influence on strains at the bottom of the surface course with the condition of high temperature,especially,the longitudinally tensile strains would increase obviously as the disengaging area between the surface course of asphalt pavement and the base layer increases.Finally,it is proved that the surface course is vulnerable to form deformations and cause damage under the combined action of low speed and high temperature.

Leaky modes and the first arrivals in cased boreholes with poorly bonded conditions

The generation mechanism of the first arrivals in the cased boreholes for the poorly bonded conditions is investigated. Based on the analyses of the Riemann surface structure of the characteristic function, the dispersion features, excitation spectra and contributions of modes excited in the cased boreholes with different cementing types are studied. The phase velocity dispersion studies of leaky modes show that high-order modes form "plateau" regions with one approximate velocity denoted by v separated by their cutoff frequencies, in which the phase velocity changes little with a considerable frequency range, while the group velocity keeps a relatively constant high value. Usually, the operation frequency range of a specific cementing evaluation acoustic logging tool is covered by such a "plateau" region. Mode excitation and contribution analyses show that the first arrivals in the cased boreholes for the poorly bonded conditions are the contributions from leaky modes, where the traveling velocity of the first arrivals processed by slowness time coherence(STC) method is equal to the approximated velocity v. Analyses on generation of leaky modes in the cased boreholes supplement the understanding of the generation mechanism of the first arrivals.