| Abstract: | An in-seam fan shoot was conducted in 1981 over a 300 m × 500 m panel of the Schwalbach seam at Ensdorf by a team from Prakla-Seismos AG of Hannover under contract to Saarbergwerke AG, Saarbrücken. The object was to study SH-mode propagation in the coal seam waveguide. The high quality dataset retrieved provides a general and valuable test bed with which to compare the performance of in-seam seismic velocity analysers. Five different dispersion analysers are demonstrated using the Schwalbach data. They are all based on the a priori assumption of coal seam homogeneity and isotropy. Space or time windows limit the resolution of the Fourier moving-window analyser, the migration based phase-velocity analyser, and the double Fourier transformer. The other two analysers, the maximum entropy moving-window analyser and the phase-moveout analyser, achieve noise-limited super-resolution by predicting the probable behaviour of the wavefield outside the window. The coal seam's characteristics conform to those predicted for a simplified model based on proposals by Elsen, Rüter and Schott of Westfälische Berggewerkschaftskasse, Bochum. The slight discrepancy between theoretical and actual dispersion characteristics could be reduced by increasing the model's complexity. However, there would be no material gain without testing the validity of the signal processing assumptions of seam isotropy and homogeneity. |
