Dispersion and attenuation due to scattering from heterogeneities of the frame bulk modulus of a poroelastic medium.

While Biot theory can successfully account for the dispersion observed in sand sediments, the attenuation at high frequencies has been observed to increase more rapidly than Biot theory would predict. In an effort to account for this additional loss, perturbation theory is applied to Biot's poroelastic equations to model the loss due to the scattering of energy from heterogeneities in the sediment. A general theory for propagation loss is developed and applied to a medium with a randomly varying frame bulk modulus. The theory predicts that these heterogeneities produce an overall softening of the medium as well as scattering of energy from the mean fast compressional wave into incoherent fast and slow compressional waves. This theory is applied to two poroelastic media: a weakly consolidated sand sediment and a consolidated sintered glass bead pack. The random variations in the frame modulus do not have significant effects on the propagation through the sand sediment but do play an important role in the propagation through the consolidated medium.