We study the influence of microstructural variables on seismic wave speed anisotropy in crustal rocks. The bulk elastic properties and corresponding wave velocities are calculated for synthetic rock samples with varying amounts of muscovite and quartz, different muscovite and quartz grain orientations and varying spatial distributions of the muscovite grains to investigate the sensitivity of seismic wave speed anisotropy on these characteristics. The asymptotic expansion homogenization method combined with finite element modelling is used to calculate bulk stiffness tensors for representative rock volumes and the wave velocities are obtained from these tensors using the Christoffel equation. The aim of this paper is to (1) demonstrate how wave speeds computed from the rigorous asymptotic expansion homogenization method compare with those generated using stiffness tensors derived from commonly applied analytic estimates, and (2) explore how different microstructural variables influence seismic wave speeds.
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Naus-Thijssen et al. (2011) studied this question.
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