The time of flight of a plane wavefront generated from an acoustic pulse is expected to decrease when the medium length between the wave emitter and receiver is shortened. This simple idea is extrapolated to the case of reservoir compaction in order to obtain a geophysical parameter R (dilation factor) that relates the rock deformation to the variation of time of flight (also called time-lapse time shift in 4D seismics) or acoustic velocity of a plane wave propagating in the same direction of deformation. Interpretation of a few laboratory compressive tests with simultaneous ultrasonic acquisition, performed on oil-saturated calcarenite samples, are presented and discussed. The samples were subjected to several stress regimes and simultaneous ultrasonic acquisitions. Despite the formerly ultrasonic acquisition rate limitations, it was possible to obtain R values for various lateral-vertical stress ratios for each sample's linear and nonlinear stress-strain trends.

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