Wireline Sonic Waveform Data

ODP logging contractor: LDEO-BRG

Hole: 903C

Leg: 150

Location: New Jersey Offshore (NW Atlantic)

Latitude: 38° 56.303' N

Longitude: 72° 49.024' W

Logging date: June, 1993

Bottom felt: 457.5 mbrf (used for depth shift to sea floor)

Total penetration: 1149.7 mbsf

Total core recovered: 323.2 m (60.4 %)

TOOL USED: DSI (Dipole Sonic Imager)

Recording mode: No information available in logging report. From the channels available on tape it seems that the DSI was run in Monopole P&S mode.

Remarks about the recording: no data was recorded between 1200 and 1214 mbsf. The data was recorded in three separate runs (upper, middle, lower), which have been spliced onboard in one single file.

MONOPOLE P&S MODE: measures compressional and hard-rock shear slowness. The monopole transmitter is excited by a high-frequency pulse, which reproduces conditions similar to previous sonic tools.

Acoustic data are recorded in DLIS format. Each of the eight waveforms generally consists of 512 samples, each recorded every 10 microsec, at depth intervals of 15.24 cm (6 inches). The original data in DLIS format is first loaded on a Sun system using GeoFrame software. The packed 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 512 samples per waveform, this corresponds to 1 + 4x512 = 4097 columns. In this hole, the specifications of the file are:

Number of columns: 4097

Number of rows: 3150

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:

DSI from DIT/DSI/NGT (lower), and DIT/DSI//HLDT/CNTG/NGT (middle and lower sections: bottom hole assembly at ~ 929 mbrf)

150-903C_mono_spl.bin: 929-1409 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.

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