Use of Ultrasonic beam transmissivity for investigating the structural features in plastic pipe cased borehole

초음파의 매질 투과성을 이용한 시추공 케이싱 배면의 암상 및 절리구조 조사 연구

Boreholes that are drilled in soft or unconsolidated materials such as gravels and coals are prone to collapse. To maintain the hole, some kinds of casing pipes are needed. If thereby a plastic pipe e.g. PVC is used for the casing, Televiewer tool is still capable of detecting structural features such as fractures in the borehole wall behind the pipe, whereas other borehole-imaging logging devices such as BIPS (Borehole Image Processing System) and FMS(Formation Micro Scanner) won't provide any information about that. Televiewer's primary component is a piezoelectric transducer centered in the hole. It acts as both a transmitter and receiver, and sends an ultrasonic beam. That is reflected, in the same manner as the seismic wave propagation, from the both sides(inner and outer surfaces) of the casing pipe, transmits through the pipe and then reflected from the borehole wall. With an appropriate choice of time-windowing, it is possible to capture the returning signals from both the borehole wall and the outer side of casing pipe as well. A suite of laboratory tests were performed on various physical models composed of plastic pipes with different diameters. Although the amplitudes of returning signals were reduced to about half the usual value due to the transmission loss, the dynamic range of Televiewer tool was sufficient to observe the structural features behind the casing pipe. Besides, several representative case studies at various research areas in our country are presented. The results demonstrate the usefulness of the transmissivity of Televiewer acoustic km, which will assist in further structural interpretation.