Time-stepping wave-equation solution for seismic modeling using a multiple-angle formula and the Taylor expansion

Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. T299-T311
Author(s):  
Edvaldo S. Araujo ◽  
Reynam C. Pestana

We have developed an analytical solution for wave equations using a multiple-angle formula. The new solution based on the multiple-angle expansion allows us to generate a family of solutions for the acoustic-wave equation, which may be combined with Taylor-series, Chebyshev, Hermite, and Legendre polynomial expansions or any other expansion for the cosine function and used for seismic modeling, reverse time migration, and inverse problems. Extension of this method to the solution of elastic and anisotropic wave equations is also straightforward. We also derive a criterion using the stability and dispersion relations to determine the order of the solution for a given time step and, thus, obtaining stable wavefields free of numerical dispersion. Afterward, numerical tests are performed using complex 2D velocity models to evaluate the effectiveness and robustness of our method, combined with second- or fourth-order Taylor approximations. Our multiple-angle approach is stable and provides reliable seismic modeling results for larger times steps than those usually used by conventional finite-difference methods. Moreover, multiple-angle schemes using a second-order Taylor approximation for each cosine term have a lower computational cost than the mixed wavenumber-space rapid expansion method.

Geophysics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 76 (5) ◽  
pp. WB97-WB107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunlei Chu ◽  
Brian K. Macy ◽  
Phil D. Anno

Pseudoacoustic anisotropic wave equations are simplified elastic wave equations obtained by setting the S-wave velocity to zero along the anisotropy axis of symmetry. These pseudoacoustic wave equations greatly reduce the computational cost of modeling and imaging compared to the full elastic wave equation while preserving P-wave kinematics very well. For this reason, they are widely used in reverse time migration (RTM) to account for anisotropic effects. One fundamental shortcoming of this pseudoacoustic approximation is that it only prevents S-wave propagation along the symmetry axis and not in other directions. This problem leads to the presence of unwanted S-waves in P-wave simulation results and brings artifacts into P-wave RTM images. More significantly, the pseudoacoustic wave equations become unstable for anisotropy parameters [Formula: see text] and for heterogeneous models with highly varying dip and azimuth angles in tilted transversely isotropic (TTI) media. Pure acoustic anisotropic wave equations completely decouple the P-wave response from the elastic wavefield and naturally solve all the above-mentioned problems of the pseudoacoustic wave equations without significantly increasing the computational cost. In this work, we propose new pure acoustic TTI wave equations and compare them with the conventional coupled pseudoacoustic wave equations. Our equations can be directly solved using either the finite-difference method or the pseudospectral method. We give two approaches to derive these equations. One employs Taylor series expansion to approximate the pseudodifferential operator in the decoupled P-wave equation, and the other uses isotropic and elliptically anisotropic dispersion relations to reduce the temporal frequency order of the P-SV dispersion equation. We use several numerical examples to demonstrate that the newly derived pure acoustic wave equations produce highly accurate P-wave results, very close to results produced by coupled pseudoacoustic wave equations, but completely free from S-wave artifacts and instabilities.


Geophysics ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (6) ◽  
pp. WCA153-WCA158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faqi Liu ◽  
Guanquan Zhang ◽  
Scott A. Morton ◽  
Jacques P. Leveille

The acoustic wave equation has been widely used for the modeling and reverse time migration of seismic data. Numerical implementation of this equation via finite-difference techniques has established itself as a valuable approach and has long been a favored choice in the industry. To ensure quality results, accurate approximations are required for spatial and time derivatives. Traditionally, they are achieved numerically by using either relatively very fine computation grids or very long finite-difference operators. Otherwise, the numerical error, known as numerical dispersion, is present in the data and contaminates the signals. However, either approach will result in a considerable increase in the computational cost. A simple and computationally low-cost modification to the standard acoustic wave equation is presented to suppress numerical dispersion. This dispersion attenuator is one analogy of the antialiasing operator widely applied in Kirchhoff migration. When the new wave equation is solved numerically using finite-difference schemes, numerical dispersion in the original wave equation is attenuated significantly, leading to a much more accurate finite-difference scheme with little additional computational cost. Numerical tests on both synthetic and field data sets in both two and three dimensions demonstrate that the optimized wave equation dramatically improves the image quality by successfully attenuating dispersive noise. The adaptive application of this new wave equation only increases the computational cost slightly.


Geophysics ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. WA3-WA11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Xie ◽  
Dinghui Yang ◽  
Faqi Liu ◽  
Jingshuang Li

With the capability of handling complicated velocity models, reverse-time migration (RTM) has become a powerful imaging method. Improving imaging accuracy and computational efficiency are two significant but challenging tasks in the applications of RTM. Despite being the most popular numerical technique applied in RTM, finite-difference (FD) methods often suffer from undesirable numerical dispersion, leading to a noticeable loss of imaging resolution. A new and effective FD operator, called the high-order stereo operator, has been developed to approximate the partial differential operators in the wave equation, from which a numerical scheme called the three-step stereo method (TSM) has been developed and has shown effectiveness in suppressing numerical dispersion. Numerical results show that compared with the conventional numerical methods such as the Lax-Wendroff correction (LWC) scheme and the staggered-grid (SG) FD method, this new method significantly reduces numerical dispersion and computational cost. Tests on the impulse response and the 2D prestack Hess acoustic VTI model demonstrated that the TSM achieves higher image quality than the LWC and SG methods do, especially when coarse computation grids were used, which indicated that the new method can be a promising algorithm for large-scale anisotropic RTM.


2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 497
Author(s):  
Gary Corey Aldunate ◽  
Reynam C. Pestana

ABSTRACT. The 3-D acoustic wave equation is generally solved using finite difference schemes on the mesh which defines the velocity model. However, whennumerical solution of the wave equation is done by finite difference schemes, attention should be taken with respect to dispersion and numerical stability. To overcomethese problems, one alternative is to solve the wave equation in the Fourier domain. This approach is stabler and makes possible to separate the full wave equation inits unidirectional equations. Thus, the full wave equation is decoupled in two first order differential equations, namely two equations related to the vertical component:upgoing (-Z) and downgoing (+Z) unidirectional equations. Among the solution methods, we can highlight the Split-Step-Plus-Interpolation (SS-PSPI). This methodhas been proven to be quite adequate for migration problems in 3-D media, providing satisfactory results at low computational cost. In this work, 3-D seismic modelingis implemented using Huygens’ principle and an equivalent simulation of the full wave equation solution is obtained by properly applying the solutions of the twouncoupled equations. In this procedure, a point source wavefield located at the surface is extrapolated downward recursively until the last depth level in the velocityfield is reached. A second extrapolation is done in order to extrapolate the wavefield upwards, from the last depth level to the surface level, and at each depth level thepreviously stored wavefield (saved during the downgoing step) is convolved with a reflectivity model in order to simulate secondary sources. To perform depth pre-stackmigration of 3-D datasets, the decoupled wave equations were used and the same process described for seismic modeling is applied for the propagation of sources andreceivers wavefields. Thus, depth migrated images are obtained using appropriate image conditions: the upgoing and downgoing wavefields of sources and receiversare correlated and the migrated images are formed. The seismic modeling and migration methods using upgoing and downgoing wavefields were tested on simple 3-Dmodels. Tests showed that the addition of upgoing wavefield in seismic migration, provide better result and highlight steep deep reflectors which do not appear in theresults using only downgoing wavefields.Keywords: 3-D seismic modeling and migration, Upoing and downgoing wavefields, Split-Step Phase Shift Plus Interpolation method, Decoupled wave equations,One-Way equations.RESUMO. A equação da onda acústica tridimensional é normalmente resolvida usando-se esquemas de diferenças finitas sobre a malha que define o modelo develocidade. Entretanto, deve-se ter cuidado com a dispersão e a estabilidade numérica durante o processo de propagação da onda na malha. Uma outra alternativa, bastante eficiente de se resolver a equação completa da onda, é desacoplando-a em duas equações de onda unidirecionais no domínio transformado de Fourier (solução pseudo-espectral). Assim, a equação completa da onda é separada em duas equações diferenciais de primeira ordem relativa á componente vertical: equação da ondaascendente (-Z) e da onda descendente (+Z). Normalmente, a equação unidirecional é resolvida com diferentes ordens de aproximação. Entre esses métodos, podemos destacar o método “Split-Step-Plus-Interpolation” (SS-PSPI), que tem sido bastante adequado para problemas de migração em meios 3-D, fornecendo resultados aum baixo custo computacional. Neste trabalho, o modelamento sísmico 3-D foi implementado usando-se o princípio de Huygens com as duas equações de onda unidirecionais desacopladas. Com o objetivo de simular uma solução equivalente à solução da equação completa, uma fonte pontual localizada na superfície é extrapoladaem profundidade, de forma recursiva, até atingir o último nível de profundidade na malha do modelo de velocidades. Uma segunda extrapolação é realizada para extrapolar para cima o campo de onda, desde o último nível em profundidade até à superfície do modelo. Assim, os receptores localizados na superfície registram ocampo de onda ascendente, que trazem informações dos refletores em subsuperfície na forma de reflexões e difrações. Para realizar a migração pré-empilhamento em profundidade de dados 3-D, usando-se as equações de onda desacopladas, o mesmo procedimento descrito para o modelamento sísmico é utilizado para a propagação dos campos de onda de fontes e receptores. Imagens migradas são obtidas usando-se condições de imagem apropriadas, onde os campos de onda da fonte e dos receptores, descendente e ascendente, são correlacionados. Sobre modelos 3-D simples foram testados os métodos de modelamento e migração, levando em conta oscampos de onda ascendente e descendente. Ficando, assim, evidenciado que no método de migração sísmica, proposto aqui, a adição do campo de onda ascendente fornece um melhor resultado, ressaltando os refletores íngremes que não aparecem nos resultados utilizando-se apenas a extrapolação do campo de onda descendente.Palavras-chave: Migração e modelagem sísmica 3-D, Migração em duas etapas mais interpolação, equações de ondas unidirecionais.


Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. T109-T119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongwei Liu ◽  
Houzhu Zhang

Explicit time-marching finite-difference stencils have been extensively used for simulating seismic wave propagation, and they are the most computationally intensive part of seismic forward modeling, reverse time migration, and full-waveform inversion. The time-marching step, determined by both the stability condition and numerical dispersion, is a key factor in the computational cost. In contrast with the widely used second-order temporal stencil, the Lax-Wendroff stencil is more cost effective because the time-marching step can be much larger. It can be proved, using theory and numerical tests, that the Lax-Wendroff stencil does enable larger time steps. In terms of numerical dispersion, the time steps for second-order and Lax-Wendroff stencils are functions of the number of shortest wavelengths away from the source location. These functions are derived by evaluating the relative L2-norm of the differences between the analytical and numerical solutions. The method for determining the time-marching step is model adaptive and easy to implement. We use the pseudo spectral method for the computation of spatial derivatives, and the wave equations that we solved are for isotropic media only, but the described principles can be easily implemented for more complicated types of media.


Geophysics ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. T9-T26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiang Du ◽  
Paul J. Fowler ◽  
Robin P. Fletcher

We compared several families of algorithms for recursive integral time-extrapolation (RITE) algorithms for waves in isotropic and anisotropic media. These methods allow simulating accurate wave extrapolation with little numerical dispersion even when using larger time steps than are usually possible for conventional finite-difference methods. These various RITE algorithms all share the use of mixed space/wavenumber-domain operators derived from Fourier integral solutions of single-mode wave equations. We evaluated a taxonomy for RITE methods based on how they approximated the influence of medium heterogeneity. One family of methods uses mixed-domain series expansions to provide accurate approximations to heterogeneous extrapolators even for large time steps. We compared several methods for deriving coefficients for such series approximations. Another family of methods uses interpolation between different homogeneous extrapolations to approximate heterogeneous time extrapolation. Such methods can be based on interpolating either the extrapolators themselves or interpolating between reference wavefields extrapolated using different homogeneous parameters. Interpolation methods work well for smooth media, but can suffer from oscillatory artifacts at large velocity discontinuities unless the time step is small. We tested numerical examples of the various families of RITE algorithms to determine their relative strengths and limitations.


Geophysics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. S177-S185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekkehart Tessmer

Reverse-time migration is based on seismic forward modeling algorithms, where spatial derivatives usually are calculated by finite differences or by the Fourier method. Time integration in general is done by finite-difference time stepping of low orders. If the spatial derivatives are calculated by high-order methods and time stepping is based on low-order methods, there is an imbalance that might require that the time-step size needs to be very small to avoid numerical dispersion. As a result, computing times increase. Using the rapid expansion method (REM) avoids numerical dispersion if the number of expansion terms is chosen properly. Comparisons with analytical solutions show that the REM is preferable, especially at larger propagation times. For reverse-time migration, the REM needs to be applied in a time-stepping manner. This is necessary because the original implementation based on very large time spans requires that the source term is separable in space and time. This is not appropriate for reverse-time migration where the sources have different time histories. In reverse-time migration, it might be desirable to use the Poynting vector information to estimate opening angles to improve the quality of the image. In the solution of the wave equation, this requires that one calculates not only the pressure wavefield but also its time derivative. The rapid expansion method can be extended easily to provide this time derivative with negligible extra cost.


Geophysics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. T21-T27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adel Khalil ◽  
Mohamed Hesham ◽  
Mohamed El-Beltagy

We propose to solve the two-way time domain acoustic wave equation in a generalized Riemannian coordinate system via finite-differences. The coordinate system is defined in such a way that one of its independent variables conforms to the primary wavefront, for example, using a ray coordinate system with the traveltime being one of the coordinates. At each finite-difference time-step, the solution domain is limited to a narrow corridor around the primary wavefront, leading to an increase in the computational performance. A new finite-difference scheme is introduced to stabilize the solution and facilitate its implementation. This new scheme is a blend of the simple explicit and the stable implicit schemes. As a proof of concept, the proposed method is compared to the classical explicit finite-difference scheme performed in Cartesian coordinates on two synthetic velocity models with varying complexities. At a reduced cost, the proposed method produces similar results to the classical one; however, some amplitude differences arise due to various implementation issues. The most direct application for the proposed method is the source side of reverse time migration.


Geophysics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. T175-T193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enjiang Wang ◽  
Jing Ba ◽  
Yang Liu

It has been proved that the implicit spatial finite-difference (FD) method can obtain higher accuracy than explicit FD by using an even smaller operator length. However, when only second-order FD in time is used, the combined FD scheme is prone to temporal dispersion and easily becomes unstable when a relatively large time step is used. The time-space domain FD can suppress the temporal dispersion. However, because the spatial derivatives are solved explicitly, the method suffers from spatial dispersion and a large spatial operator length has to be adopted. We have developed two effective time-space-domain implicit FD methods for modeling 2D and 3D acoustic wave equations. First, the high-order FD is incorporated into the discretization for the second-order temporal derivative, and it is combined with the implicit spatial FD. The plane-wave analysis method is used to derive the time-space-domain dispersion relations, and two novel methods are proposed to determine the spatial and temporal FD coefficients in the joint time-space domain. First, we fix the implicit spatial FD coefficients and derive the quadratic convex objective function with respect to temporal FD coefficients. The optimal temporal FD coefficients are obtained by using the linear least-squares method. After obtaining the temporal FD coefficients, the SolvOpt nonlinear algorithm is applied to solve the nonquadratic optimization problem and obtain the optimized temporal and spatial FD coefficients simultaneously. The dispersion analysis, stability analysis, and modeling examples validate that the proposed schemes effectively increase the modeling accuracy and improve the stability conditions of the traditional implicit schemes. The computational efficiency is increased because the schemes can adopt larger time steps with little loss of spatial accuracy. To reduce the memory requirement and computational time for storing and calculating the FD coefficients, we have developed the representative velocity strategy, which only computes and stores the FD coefficients at several selected velocities. The modeling result of the 2D complicated model proves that the representative velocity strategy effectively reduces the memory requirements and computational time without decreasing the accuracy significantly when a proper velocity interval is used.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document