High resolution imaging of the unsaturated and saturated zones of a gravel aquifer using full-waveform inversion

Author(s):  
A. Klotzsche ◽  
J. van der Kruk ◽  
H. Vereecken ◽  
G.A. Meles ◽  
J. Doetsch ◽  
...  
2020 ◽  
Vol 223 (2) ◽  
pp. 792-810
Author(s):  
Tianci Cui ◽  
James Rickett ◽  
Ivan Vasconcelos ◽  
Ben Veitch

SUMMARY Full-waveform inversion (FWI) has demonstrated increasing success in estimating medium properties, but its computational cost still poses challenges in moving towards high-resolution imaging of targets at depth. Here, we propose a target-oriented FWI method that inverts for the medium parameters confined within an arbitrary region of interest. Our method is novel in terms of both local wavefield modelling and data redatuming, in order to build a target-oriented objective function which is sensitive to the target medium only without further assumptions about the medium outside. Based on the convolution-type representation theorem, our local forward modelling operator propagates wavefields within the target medium only while providing full acoustic coupling between the target medium and the surrounding geology. A key requirement of our local FWI method is that the subsurface wavefields surrounding and inside the target be as accurate as possible. As such, the subsurface wavefields are retrieved by the Marchenko method, which can redatum the single-sided surface reflection data to the target zone while preserving both primary and multiple reflections, with minimal a priori knowledge of the full-domain medium. Given a sufficiently accurate initial velocity macromodel, our numerical examples show that our local FWI method resolves the reservoir zone of a 2-D Barrett Unconventional P-wave velocity model much more efficiently than the conventional full-domain FWI without significantly sacrificing accuracy. Our method may further enable FWI approaches to high-resolution imaging of subsurface targets.


Geophysics ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 73 (5) ◽  
pp. VE101-VE117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hafedh Ben-Hadj-Ali ◽  
Stéphane Operto ◽  
Jean Virieux

We assessed 3D frequency-domain (FD) acoustic full-waveform inversion (FWI) data as a tool to develop high-resolution velocity models from low-frequency global-offset data. The inverse problem was posed as a classic least-squares optimization problem solved with a steepest-descent method. Inversion was applied to a few discrete frequencies, allowing management of a limited subset of the 3D data volume. The forward problem was solved with a finite-difference frequency-domain method based on a massively parallel direct solver, allowing efficient multiple-shot simulations. The inversion code was fully parallelized for distributed-memory platforms, taking advantage of a domain decomposition of the modeled wavefields performed by the direct solver. After validation on simple synthetic tests, FWI was applied to two targets (channel and thrust system) of the 3D SEG/EAGE overthrust model, corresponding to 3D domains of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], respectively. The maximum inverted frequencies are 15 and [Formula: see text] for the two applications. A maximum of 30 dual-core biprocessor nodes with [Formula: see text] of shared memory per node were used for the second target. The main structures were imaged successfully at a resolution scale consistent with the inverted frequencies. Our study confirms the feasibility of 3D frequency-domain FWI of global-offset data on large distributed-memory platforms to develop high-resolution velocity models. These high-velocity models may provide accurate macromodels for wave-equation prestack depth migration.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document