Three-dimensional high-order total variation regularized acoustic impedance inversion for thin coal seam thickness prediction in the Yushe East Area, China

Abstract

Conventional three-dimensional (3D) impedance inversion methods exhibit poor lateral continuity during the inversion of thin coal seams, making it difficult to effectively preserve the lateral structural characteristics of the coal seams, which in turn affects the accurate prediction of the thickness and extent of thin coal seams. To address this issue, we propose a 3D high-order total variation (TV) regularized impedance inversion method. This method introduces high-order TV regularization constraints in both the inline and crossline directions to enhance the spatial continuity of the inversion results. The inversion objective function is solved in the frequency domain using the split-Bregman method, thereby improving computational efficiency for large-scale 3D matrix operations compared to time-domain approaches. The test results of the 3D overthrust model show that the 3D high-order TV constraint can effectively improve the transverse continuity and structural retention ability of the inversion results. The practical application results on the 3D seismic data of Yushe East Exploration Area in Shanxi Province show that, compared to the model-based inversion method in STRATA, the proposed method achieves higher vertical resolution and better lateral continuity, and can clearly depict the low-impedance characteristics of the No. 15 coal seam. Based on this, the error between the predicted coal seam thickness and the well-logging interpretation thickness is less than 8.8%, indicating that the proposed method maintains good stability and predictive capability even under limited well-control conditions.

Keywords

Acoustic impedance inversion / Three-dimensional total variation regularization / High-order difference operator / Coal seam thickness prediction / Lateral continuity

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