A MODEL FOR WAVE-PROPAGATION IN A POROUS-MEDIUM SATURATED BY A 2-PHASE FLUID

A theory to describe the propagation of elastic waves in a porous medium saturated by a mixture of two immiscible, viscous, compressible fluids is presented. First, using the principle of virtual complementary work, the stress-strain relations are obtained for both anisotropic and isotropic media. Then the forms of the kinetic and dissipative energy density functions are derived under the assumption that the relative flow within the porous medium is of laminar type and obeys Darcy's law for two-phase flow in porous media. The equations of motion are derived, and a discussion of the different kinds of body waves that propagate in this type of medium is given. A theorem on the existence, uniqueness, and regularity of the solution of the equations of motion under appropriate initial and boundary conditions is stated. © 1990, Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved.