scholarly journals High-Accuracy Location of Microseismic Events in a Strong Inhomogeneous Mining Environment by Optimized Global Full Waveform Inversion

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (20) ◽  
pp. 7205
Author(s):  
Yi Wang ◽  
Xueyi Shang ◽  
Zewei Wang ◽  
Rui Gao

High-accuracy determination of a microseismic (MS) location is the core task in MS monitoring. In this study, a 3D multi-scale grid Green’s function database, depending on recording wavefield frequency band for the target mining area, is pre-generated based on the reciprocity theorem and 3D spectral element method (SEM). Then, a multi-scale global grid search strategy is performed based on this pre-stored Green’s function database, which can be effectively and hierarchically processed by searching for the spatial location. Numerical wavefield modeling by SEM effectively overcomes difficulties in traditional and simplified ray tracing modeling, such as difficult wavefield amplitude and multi-path modeling in 3D focusing and defusing velocity regions. In addition, as a key step for broadband waveform simulation, the source-time function estimated from a new data-driven singular value decomposition averaged fractional derivative based wavelet function (DD-SVD-FD wavelet) was proposed to generate high-precision synthetic waveforms for better fitting observed broadband waveform than those by simple and traditional source-time function. Combining these sophisticated processing procedures, a new robust grid search and waveform inversion-based location (GSWI location) approach is integrated. In the synthetic test, we discuss and demonstrate the importance of 3D velocity model accuracy to waveform inversion-based location results for a practical MS monitoring configuration. Furthermore, the average location error of the 3D GSWI location for eight real blasting events is only 15.0 m, which is smaller than error from 3D ray tracing-based location (26.2 m) under the same velocity model. These synthetic and field application investigations prove the crucial role of 3D velocity model, finite-frequency travel-time sensitivity kernel characteristics and accurate numerical 3D broadband wavefield modeling for successful MS location in a strong heterogeneous velocity model that are induced by the presence of ore body, host rocks, complex tunnels, and large excavations.

Geofluids ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Yi Wang ◽  
Xueyi Shang ◽  
Kang Peng ◽  
Rui Gao

Microseismic (MS) source location can help us obtain the fracture characteristics of a rock mass under a thermal-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) coupling environment. However, the commonly used ray-tracing-based location methods are easily affected by the large picking errors, multipath effects of travel time, and focusing and defocusing effects of rays in wavefield propagation, which are caused by the strong three-dimensional (3D) heterogeneity in mining areas. In this paper, we will introduce the rapidly developed waveform inversion-based location method into a mine MS field study. On this basis, the wavefields were modeled by utilizing a high-resolution 3D velocity model, a fractional-order Gaussian wavelet source-time function, and spectral element method (SEM) wavefield modeling. In order to reduce the computation cost of wavefield modeling, the 3D ray-shooting method based on a coarse grid was adopted to obtain an approximate MS event location. Based on this initial location, the multiscale waveform inversion strategy (from coarse to fine grids) and the L-BFGS iteration optimization algorithm were separately jointly selected to improve wavefield modeling speed efficiency and iterative convergence rate. Then, the IMS MS monitoring system set in the Yongshaba mine (China) and its tomographic 3D velocity model were used to conduct the synthetic test and application study. Results show that the source-time function based on the fractional-order Gaussian function wavelet can better fit complex recording waveforms compared with the conventional Ricker wavelet-based source-time function, and the waveform misfit during the L-BFGS iteration decreased rapidly. Furthermore, the multiscale waveform inversion method can obtain a similar location accuracy compared with the waveform inversion based on a single fine grid, and it can significantly decrease the iteration times and wavefield modeling computational cost. The average location error of the eight premeasured blasting events by the proposed approach is only 17.6 m, which can provide a good data research basis for analyzing MS event location and rock mass fracture characteristics in a mine.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yueqiao Hu ◽  
Junlun Li ◽  
Haijiang Zhang

<p>Full waveform inversion (FWI) is one of the most attractive geophysical inversion methods that reconstruct models with higher quality by exploiting the information of full wave-field. Despite its high resolution and successful practical applications, there still exist several obstacles to the successful application of FWI for passive earthquake sources, such as the high non-linearity for model convergence and demand for accurate source information, such as the moment tensor, the source time function, etc. To alleviate the requirement for a priori source information in waveform inversion, we propose a new method called Waveform Energy Focusing Tomography (WEFT), which backpropagates the observed wavefield from the receivers, not the data residuals like in conventional FWI, and tries to maximize the back-propagated wavefield energy around the source location over a short period around the origin time. Therefore, there is no need to provide the focal mechanism and source time function in advance. To better reconstruct the passive sources, the least-squares moment tensor migration approach is used, and the Hessian matrix is approximated using either analytic expression or raytracing. Since waveform fitting is superseded by simpler energy maximization, the nonlinearity of WEFT is weaker than that of FWI, and even less-accurate initial velocity model can be used. These advantages of WEFT make it more practical  for challenging earthquake data, especially for local small magnitude earthquakes where both velocity model and earthquake source information are unknown.</p>


Author(s):  
Ehsan Jamali Hondori ◽  
Chen Guo ◽  
Hitoshi Mikada ◽  
Jin-Oh Park

AbstractFull-waveform inversion (FWI) of limited-offset marine seismic data is a challenging task due to the lack of refracted energy and diving waves from the shallow sediments, which are fundamentally required to update the long-wavelength background velocity model in a tomographic fashion. When these events are absent, a reliable initial velocity model is necessary to ensure that the observed and simulated waveforms kinematically fit within an error of less than half a wavelength to protect the FWI iterative local optimization scheme from cycle skipping. We use a migration-based velocity analysis (MVA) method, including a combination of the layer-stripping approach and iterations of Kirchhoff prestack depth migration (KPSDM), to build an accurate initial velocity model for the FWI application on 2D seismic data with a maximum offset of 5.8 km. The data are acquired in the Japan Trench subduction zone, and we focus on the area where the shallow sediments overlying a highly reflective basement on top of the Cretaceous erosional unconformity are severely faulted and deformed. Despite the limited offsets available in the seismic data, our carefully designed workflow for data preconditioning, initial model building, and waveform inversion provides a velocity model that could improve the depth images down to almost 3.5 km. We present several quality control measures to assess the reliability of the resulting FWI model, including ray path illuminations, sensitivity kernels, reverse time migration (RTM) images, and KPSDM common image gathers. A direct comparison between the FWI and MVA velocity profiles reveals a sharp boundary at the Cretaceous basement interface, a feature that could not be observed in the MVA velocity model. The normal faults caused by the basal erosion of the upper plate in the study area reach the seafloor with evident subsidence of the shallow strata, implying that the faults are active.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1125-1162 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. C. Stähler ◽  
K. Sigloch

Abstract. Seismic source inversion is a non-linear problem in seismology where not just the earthquake parameters themselves, but also estimates of their uncertainties are of great practical importance. Probabilistic source inversion (Bayesian inference) is very adapted to this challenge, provided that the parameter space can be chosen small enough to make Bayesian sampling computationally feasible. We propose a framework for PRobabilistic Inference of Source Mechanisms (PRISM) that parameterises and samples earthquake depth, moment tensor, and source time function efficiently by using information from previous non-Bayesian inversions. The source time function is expressed as a weighted sum of a small number of empirical orthogonal functions, which were derived from a catalogue of >1000 STFs by a principal component analysis. We use a likelihood model based on the cross-correlation misfit between observed and predicted waveforms. The resulting ensemble of solutions provides full uncertainty and covariance information for the source parameters, and permits to propagate these source uncertainties into travel time estimates used for seismic tomography. The computational effort is such that routine, global estimation of earthquake mechanisms and source time functions from teleseismic broadband waveforms is feasible.


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