A statistical review of mudrock elastic anisotropy

Mudrocks, defined to be fine‐grained siliclastic sedimentary rocks such as siltstones, claystones, mudstones and shales, are often anisotropic due to lamination and microscopic alignments of clay platelets. The resulting elastic anisotropy is often non‐negligible for many applications in the earth sciences such as wellbore stability, well stimulation and seismic imaging. Anisotropic elastic properties reported in the open literature have been compiled and statistically analysed. Correlations between elastic parameters are observed, which will be useful in the typical case that limited information on a rock's elastic properties is known. For example, it is observed that the highest degree of correlation is between the horizontal elastic stiffnesses C₁₁ and C₆₆. The results of statistical analysis are generally consistent with prior observations. In particular, it is observed that Thomsen's ? and γ parameters are almost always positive, Thomsen's ? and γ parameters are well correlated, Thomsen's δ is most frequently small and Thomsen's ? is generally larger than Thomsen's δ. These observations suggest that the typical range for the elastic properties of mudrocks span a sub‐space less than the five elastic constants required to fully define a Vertical Transversel Isotropic medium. Principal component analysis confirms this and that four principal components can be used to span the space of observed elastic parameters.