An affine generalized optimal scheme with improved free-surface expression using adaptive strategy for frequency-domain elastic wave equation

Effective frequency-domain numerical schemes were central for forward modeling and inversion of the elastic wave equation. The rotated optimal nine-point scheme was a highly used finite-difference numerical scheme. This scheme made a weighted average of the derivative terms of the elastic wave equations in the original and the rotated coordinate systems. In comparison with the classical nine-point scheme, it could simulate S-waves better and had higher accuracy at nearly the same computational cost. Nevertheless, this scheme limited the rotation angle to 45°; thus, the grid sampling intervals in the x- and z-directions needed to be equal. Otherwise, the grid points would not lie on the axes, which dramatically complicates the scheme. Affine coordinate systems did not constrain axes to be perpendicular to each other, providing enhanced flexibility. Based on the affine coordinate transformations, we developed a new affine generalized optimal nine-point scheme. At the free surface, we applied the improved free-surface expression with an adaptive parameter-modified strategy. The new optimal scheme had no restriction that the rotation angle must be 45°. Dispersion analysis found that our scheme could effectively reduce the required number of grid points per shear wavelength for equal and unequal sampling intervals compared to the classical nine-point scheme. Moreover, this reduction improved with the increase of Poisson’s ratio. Three numerical examples demonstrated that our scheme could provide more accurate results than the classical nine-point scheme in terms of the internal and the free-surface grid points.