Wireline Sonic Waveform Data

ODP logging contractor: LDEO-BRG

Well name: 747C

Leg: 120

Location: Kerguelen Plateau (central S Indian Ocean)

Latitude: 54° 48.68' S

Longitude: 76° 47.64' E

Logging date: March, 1988

Bottom felt: 1705.7 mbrf (used for depth shift to sea floor)

Total penetration: 350.5 mbsf

Total core recovered: 49.5 m (34 %)

TOOL USED: SDT (Digital Sonic Tool, also known as Array Sonic)

Recording mode: Linear mode (8 receivers).

Remarks about the recording: Like in all of the past legs, the sonic waveforms are not on depth with the other logs: in Hole 747C they seem to be offset about 15 m downward. This is inferred from the signature of the sonic waveforms, which show the bottom hole assembly at about 1833 mbrf, whereas it had been set at about 1818 mbrf.

Acoustic data were recorded in LIS format. Each of the eight waveforms consists of 500 samples and is recorded at a sampling rate of 0.1524 m. The original data is first loaded on a Sun system using GeoFrame software. The waveform data files are then converted into ASCII and finally binary format.

Each row of the binary file is composed of the entire waveform set recorded at each depth, preceded by the depth. In the general case of 8 waveforms with 500 samples per waveform, this corresponds to 1 + 8x500 = 4001 columns. In this hole, the specifications of the file are:

Number of columns: 4001

Number of rows: 1562

All values are stored as ' IEEE floating point numbers' (= 4 bytes).

Any numerical software or programing language (matlab, python,...) can import the files for further analysis of the waveforms.

The following files were converted:

SDT from DIT/SDT/NGT (recorded open hole; bottom hole assembly at ~ 1818 mbrf)

747C.bin: 1805.64-2043.53 mbrf

The sonic waveform files are not depth shifted to a reference run or to the seafloor. For depth shift to the sea floor, please refer to the DEPTH SHIFT section in the standard log documentation file.

Also, please refer to the "Remarks about the recording" note above.

NOTE: For users interested in converting the data to a format more suitable for their own purpose, a simple routine to read the binary files would include a couple of basic steps (here in old fashioned fortran 77, but would be similar in matlab or other languages):

The first step is to extract the files dimensions and specification from the header, which is the first record in each file:

  open (1, file = *.bin,access = 'direct', recl = 50) <-- NB:50 is enough to real all fields

  read (1, rec = 1)nz, ns, nrec, ntool, mode, dz, scale, dt

  close (1)

The various fields in the header are:
      - number of depths
      - number of samples per waveform and per receiver
      - number of receivers
      - tool number (0 = DSI; 1 = SonicVISION; 2 = SonicScope; 3 = Sonic Scanner; 4 = XBAT; 5 = MCS; 6 = SDT; 7 = LSS; 8 = SST; 9 = BHC; 10 = QL40; 11 = 2PSA)
      - mode (1 = Lower Dipole, 2 = Upper Dipole, 3 = Stoneley, 4 = Monopole)
      - vertical sampling interval *
      - scaling factor for depth (1.0 = meters; 0.3048 = feet) *
      - waveform sampling rate in microseconds *

All those values are stored as 4 bytes integers, except for the ones marked by an asterisk, stored as 4 bytes IEEE floating point numbers.

Then, if the number of depths, samples per waveform/receiver, and receivers are nz, ns, and nrec, respectively, a command to open the file would be:

  open (1, file = *.bin, access = 'direct', recl = 4*(1 + nrec*ns))

Finally, a generic loop to read the data and store them in an array of dimension nrec × ns × nz would be:

  do k = 1, nz

    read (1, rec = 1+k) depth(k), ((data(i,j,k), j = 1,ns), i = 1,nrec)

  enddo

For further information about the logs please contact:

Cristina Broglia
Phone: 845-365-8343
Fax: 845-365-3182
E-mail: Cristina Broglia